THE LAW OF THE WOODS.. 141 



operations in the way of jerking venison, intending to return 

 the next day. We might have left everything without a 

 guard, so far as human depredations were concerned. No 

 bolts or bars would be necessary for its protection. In the 

 first place, nobody would visit the spot, and if they did, our 

 property would be perfectly protected by the law of the 

 woods. It would be doubtless carefully inspected by any 

 curious hunter passing that way, but theft or robbery are 

 unknown here. True, a bottle of good liquor, if handled by 

 a visitor, might lose somewhat of its contents, but it would 

 be drank to the health of the owner, and in a spirit of good 

 fellowship, and not of theft, all which would be regarded 

 by woodsmen as strictly within rule, there being, as Hank 

 Wood said, " no law agin it." 



We left the first chain of ponds, and rowed some ten 

 miles up the deep and sluggish but narrow channel of the 

 river, startling every little way a deer from its propriety by 

 our presence as it was feeding along the shore. Few sports- 

 men ever visit this remote region, and it is above the range 

 of the lumbermen. We came to some rapids near the out- 

 let of the second chain of ponds, around which we walked, 

 and up which the boatmen pushed their little craft. These 

 rapids are a quarter of a mile in length, with no great 

 amount of fall, but still enough to prevent the passage up 

 them of a loaded boat. Directly at the head of these 

 rapids is the " second chain of ponds," three pleasant little 

 lakelets, of from two to four hundred acres each, surrounded 

 by dense forests, and shores in the main walled in by huge 



