A TREACHEROUS COWARD 213 



the story of it full of truth and circumstance, and I 

 will try to tell it without growing tedious, or straying 

 from what the Immortal Bard calls " The plain high- 

 way of talk." 



In the hunting season of 1893 I started on a trip 

 accompanied by my son and four Indian guides. Our 

 destination was the head-waters of the Peribonka — a 

 river that flows into Lake St. John, two hundred and 

 thirty miles north of Quebec. It was late in the Fall 

 when we crossed the lake, and there was every 

 promise that we would find ourselves in the clutches 

 of Winter before we got back. 



We entered the mouth of the river and paddled 

 along for a couple of days, passing through gorge after 

 gorge in the great Laurentian Stratum of rocks — a 

 stratum which geologists tell us is older by millions of 

 years than the sandstone or gneiss formation that 

 characterizes the rocks of some of our own States. A 

 virgin forest lines the shores. It is made up of spruce 

 and fir-trees, tangled together like a tropical jungle. 

 No road, no path, no clearing is to be seen — nothing 

 but the great river for a highway. Up to that time 

 the forest had escaped the lumberman's axe, save 

 where it had been called in to cut down a little of the 

 wood and thus clear a bit of ground for the camping 

 parties. These camps are usually found near the 

 various falls or deep pools that abound in this river 

 and add to its weird beauty. 



