CHAPTER XXX 



CARIBOU-LAND AT LAST 



On the morning of August 1 we launched on Artillery 

 Lake, feeling, for the tenth time, that now we really 

 were on the crowning stretch of our journey, that at 

 last we were entering the land of the Caribou. 



Over the deep, tranquil waters of the lake we went, 

 scanning the painted shores with their dwindling rem- 

 nants of forest. There is something inspiring about the 

 profundity of transparency in these lakes, where they 

 are 15 feet deep their bottoms are no more obscured 

 than in an ordinary eastern brook at 6 inches. On 

 looking down into the far-below world, one gets the 

 sensation of flight as one skims overhead in the swift 

 canoe. And how swift that elegant canoe was in a 

 clear run I was only now finding out. All my previous 

 estimates had been too low. Here I had the absolute 

 gauge of Tyrrell's maps and found that we four pad- 

 dling could send her, not 3^, but 4J or 5 miles an hour, 

 with a possibility of 6 when we made an effort. As we 

 spun along the south-east coast of the lake, the country 

 grew less rugged; the continuous steep granite hills 

 were replaced by lower buttes with long grassy plains 

 between; and as I took them in, I marvelled at their 

 name — the Barrens; bare of trees, yes, but the plains 

 were covered with rich, rank grass, more like New 



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