rifle rang out upon the stillness, and a fine, muscular lynx lay dead
at the Cincinnati Nimrod's feet. The animal's trail showed that he had
prowled around our bacon and hard tack in contempt, had inspected the
Betsy's commander as he lay on the sand in his blanket and under a huge
yellow mosquito-bar, but had evidently concluded that any man who could
snore as that man usually did was not a good subject for attack, and so
came on down the beach in search of blood less formidably defended. We
renewed our fire, examined our dead disturber, and turned in again to
sound sleep under the assuring suggestion of the Cincinnati man that,
whatever else the jungle might hide, two cannon-balls rarely enter the
same hole.

Our heavy and late slumber was broken by the laugh and chatter of two
Indian women and a child, who in a bark canoe a little way from shore
were regarding our camp in noisy curiosity. My blanket suddenly thrown
aside and a good-morning in English took them by surprise, and they
paddled away vigorously toward a group of lodges some four miles across
the lake. In the glorious sunset of a restful Sunday we crossed the
glassy lake to its outlet, taking two fine lake-trout of four pounds as
we went, and glided out of as beautiful a lake as sun and moon shine
upon into the swift, steady, deep current of what for the first time in
its long way Gulfward bears the full dignity of a river. Its green
banks are some two hundred feet apart. The water has a regular depth of
from five to six feet, and all the way to Lake Winnibegoshish affords
an unbroken channel for a medium-sized Western steamer. The shores,
alternating between low, firm, grass-grown earth and benches of
luxuriant green twenty feet high, grown over with open groves of fine
yellow pines, were so beautiful and regular that we could hardly
persuade ourselves that we should not see, as we rounded the graceful
curves, some fine old mansion of which these turfed knolls and charming