when you are forced to get breakfast in the dripping forest. After the
chill of early dawn you are always reluctant in the best of
circumstances to leave your blankets, to fumble with numbed fingers for
matches, to handle cold steel and slippery fish. But when every leaf,
twig, sapling, and tree contains a douche of cold water; when the
wetness oozes about your moccasins from the soggy earth with every step
you take; when you look about you and realize that somehow, before you
can get a mouthful to banish that before-breakfast ill-humour, you must
brave cold water in an attempt to find enough fuel to cook with, then
your philosophy and early religious training avail you little. The
first ninety-nine times you are forced to do this you will probably
squirm circumspectly through the bush in a vain attempt to avoid
shaking water down on yourself; you will resent each failure to do so,
and at the end your rage will personify the wilderness for the purpose
of one sweeping anathema. The hundredth time will bring you wisdom. You
will do the anathema--rueful rather than enraged--from the tent
opening. Then you will plunge boldly in and get wet. It is not
pleasant, but it has to be done, and you will save much temper, not to
speak of time.

Dick and I earned our diplomas at this sort of work. It rained twelve
of the first fourteen days we were out. Towards the end of that two
weeks I doubt if even an Indian could have discovered a dry stick of
wood in the entire country. The land was of Laurentian rock formation,
running in parallel ridges of bare stone separated by hollows carpeted
with a thin layer of earth. The ridges were naturally ill-adapted to
camping, and the cup hollows speedily filled up with water until they
became most creditable little marshes. Often we hunted for an hour or
so before we could find any sort of a spot to pitch our tent. As for a
fire, it was a matter of chopping down dead trees large enough to have