178 ADVENTURES IN THE WILDERNESS 



the beach, " it 's thirty-five years since I raised the 

 first blister on these hands with a paddle-staff, and 

 though it is a mighty silent paddle that is usually 

 back of you, yet w^e Saranac boys don't admit that 

 any man in this wilderness can beat us in a still 

 hunt." 



With this allusion to John's reputation at the 

 paddle, he headed his long, narrow boat out into 

 the lake, and steadied it between his knees until I 

 was seated in the bow ; then, with a slight push, 

 sent the light shell from the beacli, vaulting at the 

 same instant, with a motion airy as a cat's, into 

 his own seat astern. 



Who that has ever visited the Adirondacks does 

 not grow enthusiastic as he recalls the beauty and 

 S(jlemn splendor of the night, as he has beheld it 

 while being paddled across some one of its many 

 hundred lakes ? The current of air which I had 

 noted at the camp, cool and refreshing after the 

 hot summer's day, was too steady and slight to stir 

 a ripple on the glassy water. The sky was in its 

 bluest tint, sobered by darkness. In the southern 

 heavens, and even up to the zenith, the stars were 

 mellow and hazy, shorn of half their beams by the 

 moist atmosphere through which they shone. A 

 few, away to the south, over the inlet of that 

 name, lying back of a strata of air saturated al- 

 most to the density of vapor, beamed like so many 

 patches of illuminated mist. But far to the north 



