made our portage to the water that we had supposed to be an arm of
Lake Nipishish, but which proved instead to be an expansion of the
river into which the lake poured its waters through a short rapid.
This rapid necessitated another short portage before we were actually
afloat upon the bosom of Nipishish itself. There was not a cloud to
mar the azure of the sky, hardly a breath of wind to make a ripple on
the surface of the lake, and the morning was just cool enough to be
delightful.

It was the kind of day and kind of wilderness that makes one want to
go on and on. I felt again the thrill in my blood of that magic
something that had held possession of Hubbard and me and lured us into
the heart of this unknown land two years before, and as I looked
hungrily away toward the hills to the northward, I found myself
repeating again one of those selections from Kipling that I had
learned from him:

"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges--
Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"



CHAPTER VII

SCOUTING FOR THE TRAIL

Lake Nipishish is approximately twenty miles in length, and at its
broadest part ten or twelve miles in width. It extends in an almost
due easterly direction from the place where we launched our canoes
near its outlet. The shores are rocky and rise gradually into low,