assed successively from one swamp of black
pine to another, over ridges covered with white pine, all precisely
alike. As soon as our camp was set and fires lighted, we lost all
sense of having travelled, so similar were the surroundings of each
camp.

Partridges could be heard drumming in the lowlands. Mosquitoes were
developing by the millions, and cooking had become almost impossible
without protection. The "varments" came in relays. A small gray
variety took hold of us while it was warm, and when it became too
cold for them, the big, black, "sticky" fellows appeared
mysteriously, and hung around in the air uttering deep, bass notes
like lazy flies. The little gray fellows were singularly ferocious
and insistent in their attentions.

At last, as we were winding down the trail beneath the pines, we came
suddenly upon an Indian with a gun in the hollow of his arm. So
still, so shadowy, so neutral in color was he, that at first sight he
seemed a part of the forest, like the shaded hole of a tree. He
turned out to be a "runner," so to speak, for the ferrymen at
Tchincut Crossing, and led us down to the outlet of the lake where a
group of natives with their slim canoes sat waiting to set us over.
An hour's brisk work and we rose to the fine grassy eastern slope
overlooking the lake.

We rose on our stirrups with shouts of joy. We had reached the land
of our dreams! Here was the trailers' heaven! Wooded promontories,
around which the wavelets sparkled, pushed out into the deep, clear
flood. Great mountains rose in the background, lonely, untouched by
man's all-desolating hand, while all about us lay suave slopes
clothed with most beautiful pea-vine, just beginning to ripple in the
wind, and beyond lay level meadows lit by little ponds filled with
wildfowl. There was just forest enough to lend mystery to these
meadows, and to shut from our eager gaze the beauties of other and
still more entrancing glades. The most exacting hunter or trailer
could not desire more perfect conditions for camping. It was God's
own country after the gloomy monotony of the barren pine forest, and
needed only a passing deer or a band of elk to be a poem as well as a
picture.

All day we skirted this glorious lake, and at night we camped on its
shores. The horses were as happy as their masters, feeding in plenty
on sweet herbage for the first time in long days.

Late in the day we passed the largest Indian village we had yet seen.
It was sit