IN A FISHING COUNTRY 



ever-changing face as the sun swings 

 through its round, the set of the enclosing 

 hills. Uncovetous of oxen and asses, men- 

 servants and maidservants, I confess to black 

 envy of him who thus can bid the fleeting 

 instant stay. 



How fair a task, how worthy the years it 

 would joyously fill, the painting of a little 

 river's life! — a feeble birth in mountain 

 mosses, shy infancy nursed by quiet forests, 

 youth dreaming and loitering through 

 broad lakes, the wild adventures of adoles- 

 cence, the calmer usefulness of full-grown 

 strength, and, at the last, euthanasia in St. 

 Lawrence tides across the wide brown sands. 

 Painting always, everywhere, the transitory 

 mood that bestows the living soul; for I 

 affirm with the dogmatism of an ignorance 

 not desiring instruction that any picturing 

 of land or water which does not carry plain 

 signature of season, weather and time of day 

 is but a death-mask. 



All too brief the paddle across Lac Cran 

 Rouge to the blaze which marks the begin- 

 ning of the new trail, and we are adjusting 

 packs for the long pull down to the Murray 

 pnd up to the headwaters of the Riviere 

 Pore Epic, — a fall and a climb of five or 

 six hundred feet. Every fifteen minutes 

 160 



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