way, I was entirely ignorant. The wisdom of my course
was soon the more apparent; for, with all his pains, Ballantrae was no
further advanced than myself. He knew we must continue to go up one
stream; then, by way of a portage, down another; and then up a third.
But you are to consider, in a mountain country, how many streams come
rolling in from every hand. And how is a gentleman, who is a perfect
stranger in that part of the world, to tell any one of them from any
other? Nor was this our only trouble. We were great novices, besides, in
handling a canoe; the portages were almost beyond our strength, so that
I have seen us sit down in despair for half an hour at a time without
one word; and the appearance of a single Indian, since we had now no
means of speaking to them, would have been in all probability the means
of our destruction. There is altogether some excuse if Ballantrae showed
something of a glooming disposition; his habit of imputing blame to
others, quite as capable as himself, was less tolerable, and his
language it was not always easy to accept. Indeed, he had contracted on
board the pirate ship a manner of address which was in a high degree
unusual between gentlemen; and now, when you might say he was in a
fever, it increased upon him hugely.

The third day of these wanderings, as we were carrying the canoe upon a
rocky portage, she fell, and was entirely bilged. The portage was
between two lakes, both pretty extensive; the track, such as it was,
opened at both ends upon the water, and on both hands was enclosed by
the unbroken woods; and the sides of the lakes were quite impassable
with bog: so that we beheld ourselves not only condemned to go without
our boat and the greater part of our provisions, but to plunge at once
into impenetrable thickets and to desert what little guidance we still
had--the course of the river. Each stuck his pistols in his belt,
shouldered an axe, made a pack of his treasure and as much food as he
could stagger under; and deserting the rest of our possessions, even to
our swords, which would have much embarrassed us among the woods, we set
forth on this deplorable adventure. The labours of Hercules, so finely
described by Homer, were a trifle to what we now underwent. Some parts
of the forest were perfectly dense down to the ground, so that we must
cut our way like mites in a cheese. In some the bottom was full of deep
swamp, and the whole wood entirely rotten. I have leaped on