alders waved their branches thickly, saying: There is no way
here. But there it was, a path for the wood folk. And when I
followed it into the shade and silence of the woods, the first
mossy log that lay across it was worn smooth by the passage of
many little feet.

As I came back, Simmo's canoe glided into sight and I waved him
to shore. The light birch swung up beside mine, a deep
water-dimple just under the curl of its bow, and a musical ripple
like the gurgle of water by a mossy stone--that was the only
sound.

"What means this path, Simmo?"

His keen eyes took in everything,at a glance, the wavy waterway,
the tracks, the faint path to the alders. There was a look of
surprise in his face that I had blundered onto a discovery which
he had looked for many times in vain, his traps on his back.

"Das a portash," he said simply.

"A portage! But who made a portage here?"

"Well, Musquash he prob'ly make-um first. Den beaver, den
h'otter, den everybody in hurry he make-um. You see, river make
big bend here. Portash go 'cross; save time, jus' same Indian
portash."

That was the first of a dozen such paths that I have since found
cutting across the bends of wilderness rivers,--the wood folk's