touching anywhere, it just would not go. As long as 

 the stroke of the paddle continued the canoe moved 

 slowly, but no sooner did the paddle stop than the canoe 

 stopped also. Great clouds of black muck swirled up 

 after every paddle stroke. A six foot paddle thrust 

 down into that muck would disappear without seeming 

 to strike anything different. For a half mile we la- 

 bored across that weird stretch of mud and water to the 

 portage into Rot Lake. 



The portage was only a jump over and the lake was 

 not much more than the portage. Another jump over 

 and we were on the shore of South Lake. There is 

 nothing small about South Lake. Three miles long, 

 rather narrow for its length and over 600 feet deep it 

 is the highest of the eastward flowing boundary lakes. 

 On a still day its passage is uneventful. At the far 

 end of it is a low sand portage, part swamp, and over 

 a half mile long. Barren, monotonous, unattractive 

 and wearisome it nevertheless assumes a certain dignity 

 from the fact that it is the divide between the north 

 and south boundary waters. The waters of South Lake 

 flow East into Lake Superior, while those of North Lake 

 flow west and north into Hudson Bay. Moreover there 

 is a certain childish pleasure in struggling across the 

 portage with one foot in Canada and one in the United 

 States. 



. A mile across North Lake another ranger cabin await- 

 ed us, a veritable castle compared with our abode of 

 the night before, and we hastened to its hospitality. 



18 



