IN A FISHING COUNTRY 



Once only was it otherwise. We had 

 done fifteen miles of river and portage in 

 a downpour of rain. There was not a dry 

 stitch in the party, nor a dry twig in the 

 woods, and I remember it as a solitary 

 occasion when there was real difficulty in 

 making a fire. Wood from the heart of a 

 dead tree was at length kindled with a 

 match that had survived in a pack. (The 

 evening looked and felt unpropitious for 

 fishing: reason and the flesh both made 

 their protest against paddling another 

 couple of miles in the wet; reason was dis- 

 comfited, the shivering flesh consoled by 

 the killing of a brace of trout that weigh- 

 ed twelve pounds). 



At five o'clock the next morning break- 

 fast was under way, for we had before us 

 two miles of dead water, a mile of rapid, 

 another two miles of paddling and a drive 

 of fifty-odd miles, — enough to exhaust the 

 daylight. The rapid was a fairly stifTf one 

 for running without a pole; after the first 

 steep pitch with an awkward crossing in 

 heavy water, boulders set like the teeth of 

 a harrow but not with so pleasing a 

 regularity were the difficulty. You had to 

 sidle back and forth, crossing and re-cross- 

 ing with hard continuous labour, for un- 

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