But this was as it
should be. We were not fishermen now, but explorers; and explorers,
Eddie said, always court hardships, and pitch their camps in the midst
of dangers.

Immediately after our arrival, Eddie and I took one side of the brook
and the guides the other, and we set out to discover things, chiefly the
upper lake. Of course we would pick the hardest side. We could be
depended on to do that. The brook made a long bend, and the guides, who
were on the short side, found fairly easy going. Eddie and I, almost
immediately, were floundering in a thick miry swamp, where it was hot
and breezeless, and where the midges, mooseflies and mosquitoes gave us
a grand welcome. I never saw anybody so glad to be discovered as those
mooseflies. They were as excited as if we were long lost relatives who
had suddenly turned up with a fortune. They swarmed about us and clung
to us and tapped us in any convenient place. I did not blame them, of
course. Moose diet, year in and year out, would make them welcome
anything by way of a change. And what droves of moose there must be in
that swamp to support such a muster of flies! Certainly this was the
very heart of the moose domain.

Perhaps the reader who has never seen a moosefly may not appreciate the
amplitude and vigor of our welcome. The moosefly is a lusty fellow with
mottled wings. I believe he is sometimes called the deerfly, though as
the moose is bigger and more savage than the deer, it is my opinion that
the moosefly is bigger and more savage than any fly that bites the deer.
I don't think the deer could survive him. He is about the size of the
green-headed horsefly, but of more athletic build. He describes rapid
and eager circles about one's head, whizzing meanwhile in a manner which
some may like, but which I could not learn to enjoy. His family is large
and he has many friends. He brings them all along to greet you, and they
all whiz and describe circles at once, and with every circle or two he
makes a dip and swipes up about a gill of your lifeblood and guzzles it
down, and goes right on whizzing and circling until he picks out a place
for the next dip. Unlike the mosquito, the moosefly does not need to
light cautiously and patiently sink a well until he strikes a paying
vein. His practice on the moose has fitted him for speedier methods. The
bill with which he is accustomed to bore through a tough moosehide in a
second or two will penetrate a man in the briefest fracti