his boat.

These little lakes are probably sixty-five miles from the settlements,
allowing for the winding course of the rivers. Just above, where the
river enters, is a dam, built of logs some fifteen feet high, erected
by the lumbermen the last winter to hold back the water, so as to
float their logs down from this to Tupper's Lake, and so on down the
Rackett to the mills away below. Around this dam is the last carrying
place between this and Mud Lake, over which our boatmen trudged with
their boats, like great turtles with their shells upon their backs.
This is still called Bog River, and though above the dam to Mud Lake,
where it takes its rise, it is deep and sluggish, yet it is doing it
honor overmuch to dignify it by the name of a river. It was large
enough, however, to float our little craft. We left our baggage-master
here with most of our luggage, to perfect his 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 banter 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