When I was exploring the glaciers between Mount Fairweather and the Stikeen River, one cold day in November, after trying in vain to force a way through the innumerable icebergs of Sum Dum Bay to the great glaciers at the head of it, I was weary and baffled and sat resting in my canoe convinced at last that I would have to leave this part of my work for another year.

If "a canoe," contrary to the general impression, is at least as long as "a ship," it is very important that children should so understand it; and if "a pin-fish" is really as big as "a shark," no mistaken deference to the feelings of the latter should make us hesitate to say so.

We at once set up a chorus of pitiful yells, when a man, who fortunately heard us, came to our rescue with a canoe and towed us ashore.

Nativeone man canoe.........

Nativetwo man canoe.........

Nativethree man canoe.......

By this time the highroad between Ghent and Antwerp was utterly impassableone might as well have tried to paddle a canoe up the rapids at Niagara as to drive a car against the current of that river of terrified humanityso, taking advantage of comparatively empty by- roads, I succeeded in reaching Doel, a fishing village on the Scheldt a dozen miles below Antwerp, by noon on Thursday.

Does he live far from here?" "Marie take you to-night in canoe.

" She had often taken him out upon the lake before, for she managed their birch-bark canoe with more skill than himself, and it was convenient to have some one to paddle while he fished or read or dreamed.

She rowed him swiftly up the lake for several miles, then, fastening the canoe, led the way through a trail in the forest.

When within sight of Michillimackinac a storm arose driving them out upon the open lake, and playing with their canoe as though it were a cockle-shell.

All these books I read in anticipation of a canoe-voyage on Lake Superior as far as the Pictured Rocks, and, though I was afterwards compelled to give up this project, they aided me in judging of what I afterwards saw and heard of the Indians.

II A Face at Sherry’s III The House of a Thousand Candles IV A Voice From the Lake V A Red Tam-O’-Shanter VI The Girl and the Canoe VII The Man on the Wall VIII A String of Gold Beads IX The Girl and the Rabbit X An Affair With the Caretaker XI

A canoe is the most graceful, the most sensitive, the most inexplicable contrivance of man.

The owner of the canoe had evidently stolen close to the Glenarm dock, and had made off when alarmed by the noise of our approach through the wood.

The lake, the surrounding wood, were an unknown world,—the canoe, a boat of dreams.

CHAPTER VI THE GIRL AND THE CANOE

I dropped a canoe into the water and paddled off toward the summer colony, whose gables and chimneys were plainly visible from the Glenarm shore.

I walked back to the wharf, where I had left my canoe, and was about to step into it when I saw, rocking at a similar landing-place near-by, another slight craft of the same type as my own, but painted dark maroon.

I was sure the canoe had not been there when I landed.

“I beg your pardon,” I said, stepping away from the canoe.

I had snatched off my cap and stood waiting beside the canoe, feeling, I must admit, a trifle guilty at being caught in the unwarrantable inspection of another person’s property—particularly a person so wholly pleasing to the eye.

But I didn’t have the combination,” I said, steadying the canoe carefully to mitigate the ignominy of my failure.

I took the canoe I had chosen for my own use from the boat-house and paddled up the lake.

I scanned the water and the borders of the lake for signs of life,—more particularly, I may as well admit, for a certain maroon-colored canoe and a girl in a red tam-o’-shanter, but lake and summer cottages were mine alone.