GRASS RIVER. — JOE BOLIO. 229 



to Thomas's Hotel, three-fourths of a mile above the dam, 

 on the east shore, carried one boat over a quarter of a 

 mile to Silver Lake, as beautiful a little sheet of water as 

 was ever made ; and then we safely crossed this lake, four 

 of us and our luggage, bestowed in Young's little Rushton 

 boat 13^ feet long and weighing thirty-eight pounds. We 

 pushed on through the woods to Owens's Plains — an open- 

 ing where one John Grimshaw, in a forlorn way, cultivates 

 a few sterile acres and tarries to "grow up with the coun- 

 try," — and struck Grass River at the falls, about two and a 

 half miles from Thomas's. In the woods we were caught 

 in a heavy thunderstorm, but, putting on our rubber coats, 

 we trudged patiently and persistently on, — the only genu- 

 inel}' contented personage of the four being the guide who 

 carried the boat over his head. Crossing the river above 

 the falls on big stones in the river bed, we entered a .second 

 growth of spruces so thickly grown and interwoven that 

 we were obliged to cut our way with an axe. Emerging 

 from this, and going on easterly, we at length came to a 

 good woods-road running from the Grass River Reservoir 

 out to Colton, and reached the Reservoir at half-past two 

 . o'clock in the afternoon. 



Joseph Bolio, a black-eyed, wiry, voluble little Canadian 

 Frenchman of Yankee speech, keeper of the dam, furnished 

 us with a good dinner and his society. Somehow jMcking 

 up the fact that there was a lawyer in the party, he sought 

 an interpretation of the game law as to killing deer, which 

 might bear favorably upon a " little dithcully " he had had 

 with the authorities, out in the settlements, resulting in lii< 



