144 SPORT INDEED 



the canoes. Then before the goddess of morn had 

 time to get her eyes open, we pushed off for our last 

 canoeing trip of that season. 



The pouring rain had now ceased and the weather 

 had turned so cold that the water froze upon our 

 paddles, and the river was so nearly frozen that there 

 was little or no spring in the canoes. 'Twas a dead 

 push all the way up to the Northeast Carry. We had 

 not been able to draw on our leather boots by reason 

 of their soaking of the night before, and rubber boots 

 had to be substituted ; and these, in that biting cold, 

 made it uncomfortable paddling. After a run of four 

 miles we were glad to push the canoes ashore, build a 

 fire and warm up. At about nine o'clock we landed 

 at the Carry, hired a wagon to tote our stuff over to 

 Moosehead Lake and then walked the two miles of 

 good road which constitutes this famous Carry. 



When we reached the little hotel at the lake end of 

 the Carry we had to wait several hours for a steam- 

 boat to take us to Greenville, forty miles away, 

 whence the train is taken for Bangor. Here I noticed 

 a youth who looked feeble and sick, as if nigh unto 

 death. He was a farmer's boy whose home was near 

 Hartford, Conn. The boy had read and reread 

 stories of hunters ; of their happy lives in the woods, 

 and their ignorance of restraint, and pored over them 

 until his brain had room for nothing else. The read- 

 ing of Cooper's novels had so fired his imagination 



