for a day so eventful. The trail led down into a valley opening
eastward to Seal Lake, and walled in on three sides by the hills.
On either hand reaching up their steep slopes were the spruce woods
with beautiful white birches relieving their sombreness, and above-
-the sheer cliffs. A network of little waterways gave back images
of delicate tamaracks [Larches] growing on long points between.
Not a leaf stirred, and silence, which is music, reigned there.
The valley was flooded with golden light, seeming to hold all in a
mysterious stillness, the only motion the rapids; the only sound
their singing, with now and again the clear call of a bird.

After reaching the point where the canoes could again be launched,
it was but a few minutes till we were in the rapids. They seem
very innocent to me now, but then running rapids was a new
experience, and it was tremendously exciting as the canoes sped
down the current, the men shouting to each other as we went.

Two more short portages, which led down over a fine bear trail cut
deep into the white moss; two brisk little runs in the canoes, and
we reached smooth water, where, rounding the last bend in the
brook, we could look straight away eastward into Seal Lake. A
little way below the bend our brook joined a river, coming down
from the northwest, which the trappers call Thomas River.

The lake was little more than a mile wide where we entered it, and
extended southward nearly two miles. Gilbert pointed out the
opening in the hills to the southwest where the Nascaupee River
leaves the lake, and I had George and Job paddle across that I
might see it. A continuation of the hills, south of the valley we
had passed in the morning, swung round the south shore of the lake