pened? ace 
7 
THE WILDERNESS VIRGIN -39 
and in the State of New York they fish the 
little brooks with light fly-rods and when 
they land a one-pound trout they get out 
on the bank and dance in their long wad- 
ing-boots and shout for joy. 
So Sam in evangelistical spirit had seated 
himself down and written to his benighted 
brother in the United States of America. 
“Come up into Canada and catch some 
grown fish,” said he, “‘and bring your bass 
tip, in case anything happens.” 
George came, 750 miles by rail, and quite 
prepared to go as far again by canoe, if 
necessary. Trout was the only condition 
insisted upon. 
We had fished the Devil’s Dam and 
the Whisky Jack Rapids and caught trout, 
plenty of them, smalt pan-fry trout and 
trout you must cut into steaks to cook, and 
for two days we had fed on trout and boiled 
potatoes and Dutch-oven bread and maple 
syrup until we could look down and see the 
fat puffing our cheeks up under the eyes. 
Also, we felt sufficiently strong to essay the 
Long Portage, all the more so inasmuch as 
we had good old Dick and his broad- 
backed brother in the checked shirt to carry 
the canoes. 
“Will you take us over to see this little 
wilderness virgin, Dick?” said we, our 
voices trembling a little with anxiety and 
feeling. 
“T will if you do the square thing,” said 
Dick. 
““What’s that ?”? demanded we. 
“Keep it to yourselves,” said he. 
“Dick,” we cried, “‘it’s too easy. What’s 
the name of the lake?” 
“Tt has no name,” said Dick, 
not on the map, either.” 
“‘ All the better,” said we. 
get there.” 
The night descended, the old familiar 
picture that we loved, the blue smoke, white 
canvas, mysterious forest shadows and the 
ruddy flare of the fire. 
We slept again on balsam brush, with our 
cheeks pressed against the cool canvas of 
our dunnage-bags. At daylight came the 
call, ‘‘Breakfas’, breakfas’,’”’ and we were 
up, and by sunrise away. 
We crossed the portage without a halt. 
Dark avenues of spruce; clumps of clean 
needle-carpeted pine woods, cool-shadowed 
‘Cand it’s 
“May it never 
and whispering; patches of brule and the 
open sky; then a muskeg with the old cor- 
duroy rotted out and greasy poles here and 
there to save one from the morass; up-hill 
into the hardwood high and dry, and then, 
finally, the silent gray glint of the lake 
through tne leaves and tree trunks in the 
hollow beyond. 
“That it, Dick ?” 
‘““'That’s her,” said Dick. 
The canoes were put down at the mossy 
landing and we mopped our brows. 
The open water, leaden and calm, re- 
flected the low roof of the overcast sky. A 
loon, well out from the shore, laughed away 
high in the treble, every note clear and 
smooth as a God-gifted soprano’s, and the 
silence threw them back from the hills, one 
by one, clear, unbroken as they went. 
‘* Are there are trout in this lake, Dick ?”’ 
we asked, for the mere joy of hearing. 
‘We'll find out before we’re much older,”’ 
said Dick. He unslung his paddle from 
the thwart-strings and we got afloat. 
Down fifty feet in the clear depths I could 
see the boulders, slowly sailing by beneath 
the canoe, which floated, it almost seemed, 
in air, scarcely a ripple marking the line on 
the surface. 
“Well, boys, here goes for a big one,” 
said Sam, as he swept by in the other canoe. 
The sinker took the little chub down into 
the darkness. With paddles barely work- 
ing, the canoes drifted along, close to the 
tops of the overhanging cedars on the steep, 
rocky shore. I had now unlimbered my 
rod also. We circled the horseshoe curve of 
the bay and crept half-way up the western 
slant without a strike. 
*““We’ve got to find a school,” said Dick, 
sucking his pipe, “though what old- 
fashioned trout want to keep school for at 
their time of life, I don’t know.” 
The other canoe was several lengths 
ahead, with Sam and George trolling, a 
rod out each side. 
Suddenly across the calm I heard the 
sharp click of a reel, the bump of wood on 
the gun’!’ and an exclamation in the twang 
of ‘‘little old New York.” 
“Holy sufferin’.” © 
Dick, in my canoe, chuckled in his pipe- 
stem. 
George’s rod was dancing, like a bulrush 
