found crick paved with gold. So far there's nobody here but me." 



Bob Leonard had built a camp on a new highway cutting 

 through the Canadian bush in the wild country between Lake 

 Superior and James Bay. 



The road had been opened to the public in 1946. It's High- 

 way 11 and it runs from Cochrane to Lake Superior. 



Five of us made the trip to Leonard's place last August. Read- 

 ing from the merely ardent to the rabid, they were Jim Hendryx, 

 Bob Crowell, Johnny Calkins, the writer, and Lowell Marvin. 



When we started north we had in our baggage not only fly 

 rods but a Geiger counter. We were going close to recent 

 uranium discoveries, and might possibly walk over some pitch- 

 blende. 



As we rode west out of Cochrane we found ourselves wishing 

 we had all summer to explore. The road from Cochrane to 

 Hearst is subarctic farm lands alternating with muskeg, but 

 beyond Hearst, every stream is an invitation to stop. 



The Kabinakagami, Shekak, and Nagagami . . . the Pitopiko 

 and the Otasawian . . . good streams, all. Past Leonard's camp, 

 the Pagwa flows wide and deep, its shores solid walls of spruce, 

 cedar, tamarack, birch, and poplar. 



"We'll go up the Osawin," Leonard announced. "The first 

 day will be kind of rough going, but after that there'll be plenty 

 canoe water." 



He didn't exaggerate. We had six miles of paddling, three 

 more of dragging our loaded canoes through shallows, and a 

 two-mile portage that ingeniously ended in a steep hill to the 

 top of a canyon. 



Above the canyon, the Osawin was deep. The canyon itself 

 was granite. It funneled the river into a narrow slot through 

 which the river boiled with compressed fury. Farther down, 

 white water tumbled into a pool and raced around past giant 

 boulders to the first of a long succession of rapids and pools. 



Lowell Marvin caught the first trout a full-bodied fish weigh- 

 ing nearly two pounds. Johnny Calkins stood at the foot of the 

 slot, cast four times into the white water, and took a trout each 

 time, all of them about a pound. 



233 



