108 LAKE SUPERIOR. 



store-house was so small that Mr. Beggs at first thought he could not 

 spare us any, but just before we left, taking compassion on our desti- 

 tute condition, he gave us a supply that would last us to Michipieotin. 



When we got outside of the bar the wind rose again. We soon 

 lost sight of the bateau, and the two canoes kept on alone as well as 

 they could against the wind and sea. We in the larger canoe could 

 not help watching with some anxiety the other one under our lee, 

 occasionally throwing half her length out of the water, and then 

 pounding down so as to make it fly up on all sides. This thumping 

 does not agree very well with the birch bark. The gum gets cracked 

 and lets in the water, and there is not substance enough about the 

 fabric to float when filled. It was fast growing dark, and the shore 

 to leeward showed a horrid line of grim weather-beaten rocks and white 

 breakers. At length the men in the other canoe called to us that 

 they could stand it no longer, and kept away for a cove we had just 

 passed. We followed them, but although only a few hundred yards 

 behind, yet it was so dark that when we entered the narrow mouth of 

 the bay, we could see nothing of them. The outline of the shore to 

 leeward, however, was still distinguishable against the western sky, 

 and we assured ourselves that they had not gone further to leeward. 

 We kept, therefore, an anxious lookout as we ran rapidly up the 

 narrow bay, so narrow that we could not pass them undiscovered if 

 they were afloat, and fired off several guns, but without answer. 

 Before long we came to what seemed the bottom of the bay, but here 

 we found no signs of our companions, and seeing a further passage 

 to the left, we supposed they had kept on. Accordingly we pushed 

 on up a river-like inlet, with high mountainous ridges on each side 

 half a mile or more before we came to the bottom. 



Here we landed on a little sand-beach, heaped up with a great 

 quantity of drift-wood. While the men were pitching the tent in an 

 open space inside the fringe of bushes, we lighted a fire, and looked 

 about with a torch made of a roll of birch-bark for a tree suitable for 

 a signal-fire. We soon found a tall spruce well covered with lichen, 

 and applying the torch below, the flames climbed and spread upward 

 and horizontally from one branch to another until the whole burst 

 upwards in a vast tongue of flame, crackling and whirling up sparkles 

 of burning twigs and leaves to such a height that it seemed impossi- 



