[woop] LAURENCIANA 53 
canoe. To begin with, the canoe is, of all possible craft, the nearest 
to Nature. There is no apparatus between you and it and the water, 
except a paddle, and the paddle gets its fulerum and leverage directly 
from your own body. Every motion,—fast or slow, ahead, astern, or 
veering—is also directly due to your own bodily self. And your plea- 
sure, your sport, and often your very life, entirely depend upon the 
courage, skill and strength with which you use your muscles. The 
canoe must be seaworthy enough to ride out a storm; yet light enough 
for two men to handle under all circumstances, and for one man to 
handle alone when working for a throw. If you would see man to per- 
fection as a beast of prey, take the stern paddle and watch the harpooner 
forward—his every faculty intent, his every muscle full-charged for a 
spring, and his whole tense body the same to the harpoon as the bow 
is to the arrow. But if you would actually feel what it is to be this 
human bow and arrow, you had better begin by making sure that 
you are absolutely at home in a canoe in all emergencies. Then take 
the harpoon and poise it so that the rocking water, your comrade in 
the stern, the mettlesome canoe, yourself, your line and your harpoon 
ean all become one single point of energy whenever that sudden white- 
domed gleam tells you the whale is head-on and close-to for just one 
thrilling flash of a second. 
Thus, sanctuaries and game preserves each have their own peculiar 
interests and delights. But there is one supreme interest and delight 
they share together. This is the Pageant of Evolution—a pageant now 
being played under the eye of the flesh, but only as part of an infinitely 
greater whole, that began we know not when nor where, that is tending 
we know not whither, and that will end we know not how. It is a 
pageant always growing greater and greater, as the mind’s eye finds 
higher and ever higher points of view. And it is a pageant with the 
same setting all over the World—except on the St. Lawrence. I have 
dwelt on this difference before; but I return to it, because it gives us 
one deep note of significance that is lacking everywhere else. It con- 
sists, of course, in the immeasurable age of the Laurentians, which, 
being older than Life, are, therefore, a land co-eval with the sea and 
sky. Think of this triune stage of sky and sea and primal land, set 
up by God so long before He put his creatures there, these millions of 
years ago! Then watch the actors. First, and slowest of all in their 
simplicity, the plants; and animals so lowly that they have hardly 
got beyond the frontiers of the vegetable kingdom. Next, the rest of 
the immense sub-kingdom of Invertebrata. And, after them, the fishes 
and reptilia, and the birds, who are directly of reptilian origin. And 
then the mammals, who, after infinite travail, have produced one 
