CHAPTER XI 



IN THE OOZY PLACES 



MUCH has been written of expeditions 

 into the great northern hinterland, that 

 lone, silent land of the sombre spruces, 

 of the crystal streams where lie unconquered 

 finny warriors, of mighty rapids, of the giant 

 wild kind that pose in the shallows, of the red- 

 man and his inseparable, the canoe. Also much 

 has been told — and it never stales — of the won- 

 drous mountainland of the West, with its eter- 

 nal god-like peaks, its dream-valleys of color, 

 its sentinel timbers that pierce the blue, and its 

 ice-born streams of living crystal. Yet after 

 having stood within those valleys, breathed the 

 rainbow spray from the falls, lured the fighting 

 denizens of the swirling waters to their death, or 

 loitered out miles from nowhere, among those 

 hushed pines and cedars, where the deer-trails 

 are worn deep across the park-like openings, 

 and the sacked nest of the yellow- jackets, fresh 



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