A WEEK IN A DUG-OUT.

'A'

and we pushed out upon the lake in our dug-out.

"Au revoir, monsieur, et bonne chance," replied Moreaud from the shore; then lighting his pipe, he turned on his heel, and disappeared in the forest.

We were in the backwoods of Canada. We had left the last house of the pioneer habitant on the farther bank of the river, and were now fairly under way on our voyage of a hundred miles, through a forest as yet unmarred by man. Our route lay along the great natural thoroughfares of all wooded countries - the streams and lakes-and our vehicle was a dug-out.

But why a dug-out?

Well, I take it that we fellows of offices, professions, and books go camping out for much the same reason that Antæus touched the earth, and that the closer we get to our common mother, the stronger do we become. Our savants have not yet decided, I believe, in what frail bark man first trusted himself upon the wave; but surely, next to the log au naturel, the dug-out log must have been the earliest means of transportation upon the water.

So, in selecting a boat for our trip, I had severely discarded the canoe and the bateau as too intricate, complex, and civilized, and joyfully accepted the dug-out as nearest the bosom of nature. And now I floated away in my hollow log with all the zest of an old cave-dweller with his paddle and flint-headed javelin.

Our dug-out, or pirogue, as the habitants call it, once stood a noble pine of the forest. It was a single pine log, twenty-six and a half feet long and two feet four inches wide, rudely hollowed out, and the ends roughly hewed into bow and stern, somewhat after the model of a bark canoe.

The crew numbered three, my two guides and myself. The guides were brothers, James and George Dall. George, the light and festive bachelor, paddled in the bow; James, the dignified, weightier father of a family, wielded his mighty paddle in the stern. I sat amidships on a buffalo-robe,

with fishing-rods and a light fowling-piece on either side. Our plunder was stowed close behind me, and made a most acceptable backing.

Thus we sailed across Beaver Lake-a forest-girt pool dotted with lily-pads, and so shoal that we touched bottom with our paddles at every stroke. We gain the outlet, and glide into the dead water of Beaver Brook. Trunks of fallen trees reach out toward us from either swampy shore, their withered branches covered with long moss. Then the banks grow closer and higher, the current increases, and the stream changes into a rippling brook. The guides change their paddles for setting-poles. Faster runs the brook and shoaler grows the water, till at last, with a grating jar-a sound I soon learn to hate the dug-out grounds solidly on a pebbly bar in mid-stream.

The guides jump overboard, and haul and shove the pirogue ahead. This is hard work. I lighten it two hundred pounds by taking to the water myself, and abandon my luxurious seat on the buffalo-robe for a chilling wade in Beaver Brook.

We toil on, floating our wooden canoe through the deep pools, lifting and shoving her over the shoal bars. But worse than this is in store for us. Round a turn in the brook we come upon a mass of fallen cedars lying squarely across the

"Oh, we reduces it, sir, with water from our block o' maple sugar."

Delicious syrup it was, too; and the buckwheats were no fancy, fragile, hotel affairs. Each cake was just the bigness of the frying pan, and half an inch thick; light and palatable they were, though, and in the woods, I am sure no one could cherish any animosity toward them on account of their size.

We struck camp, packed our traps, pushed the pirogue over the fallen tree, where it had hung all night, and poled down stream. It was but twenty minutes past seven. The river fog broke in rifts

es as completely as if it flowed into the bowels of the earth. Paddle and pole are useless; we lie flat on our backs, catch hold of the net-work of branches overhead, and pull the pirogue through the jungle that chokes the rivulet. We grope our way slowly. The boughs grate, rub, and scratch over the canoe and ourselves, their leaves all dripping with the morning mist. It was the blindest sail I ever took. Better a "dungeon o' fog" on the open sea.

So we crawl on for a mile, threading the labyrinth of an alder swamp, then with a cheer shoot out into a rippling river thrice the size of our brook. The broad

overhead, and the warm blue sky looked through. The brook grew deeper; our dug-out still grated on the bars, but we pushed her over without jumping into the water, and poled on dry-shod and thankful. Soon a large brook pours in on our right, and with its added volume we glide smoothly along.

Now the current becomes sluggish, the water dark and deep. We enter an alder swamp, through which the stream winds and twists like "the sinuous Songo." The alder bushes protrude into the water from either bank, their long stems interlock, and their branches form a plaited leafy barrier across our pathway, the brook, which runs under the thicket, and vanish

current lapses between pebbly beaches, a stately forest rises from either bank, wooded mountains tower athwart the vista of the stream, and overhead smiles the clear blue sky, into which the last ragged vestiges of the fog are dissolving.

We stand erect in the canoe, stretch our necks and arms, devoutly thankful for a clear sky and an open stream. Then we run the pirogue ashore on a gravelly bar, cast overboard a cargo of leaves, twigs, and broken alder branches, bail out, dry ourselves in the sun, and shove off down the Gateno River, difficulties past, and fair sailing ahead.

The water was clear as crystal, yet of a tawny color, like dark amber. It rippled

light yellow over pebbly bars, swirled dark, deep, and brown round the broad crescent of a curving pool, then rippled on again. Our canoe slid along on its glassy current through a primeval forest. The regular plash of the setting-poles into the water and their sharp grate against the gravel bottom were the only sounds that broke the restful calm. Soon Jim chants a quaint French song, and the poles swing in time to the tune. We glide through a wide intervale, covered with rich tall grass, and dotted with stately elms, which rise like Corinthian columns from the plain.

Now our river strikes a spur of the mountain, is deflected to the north, ripples through a stretch of forest, then opens out into a swampy level, overgrown with tall rank reeds and grasses, through which the passing breeze waves like a running fire.

Jim ceases singing. The guides noiselessly stow the poles away and take to the paddles.

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Are you ready, sir?" asks Jim. "Ready for what?"

"There might be a moose along here, sir, or a caribou, perhaps." Out springs my gun. "They comes down to places like this in the summer, and wades out into the water up to their necks, and browses round on the grass and lilies and the like o' that, sir; and if you paddle along quiet like, mebbe you'll get on to 'em, but if they hears yer pole strike the bottom, never a one 'll you git whatever they'll be off before ever you comes in sight. But we'll soon come to a handy chance for 'em now, sir, in a bogan to yer right." "And what's a bogan ?"

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'That's an Injun name, sir; but mebbe you've heard it called logan, or perhaps poke-logan. They's all Injun names for a place where the dead water backs up out of a river, and makes a kind o' shaller pond like up into the grass and swamp. But look out, sir," added Jim, dropping his voice to a whisper, "we're right on to it."

The pirogue drifted slowly past the mouth of a shallow lagoon, covered with lily-pads, fringed with reeds, and skirted by the forest. We intently watched every object as it slid into view by the narrow mouth of the logan. Every instant I expected to see a branching pair of antlers rise with a splash as a moose bounded from water into cover. But the logan was passed without sight or sound.

Is it merely a coincidence that the sheet of water the Indian calls logan we name lagoon, from the Italian lagune?

As there are no moose, Jim and George take their poles again, and our long hollow log is propelled steadily through the still water of the broadening, currentless river.

Rounding a point, we come suddenly upon a bittern perched in an alder bush at the edge of the water, beak and neck raised in a perpendicular, and stiff as a skewer. He looked so oddly, standing bolt-upright, with his beak pointing to the zenith, that, although we passed within three feet, we made no effort to catch him. I soon regretted that we had not added him to our supplies for the pot, so we backed the canoe to rectify our error. "It's a young 'un," quoth Jim; "he can't fly; that's why he was a-prayin' with his bill up. This pole is the boy for Jest you look here and see me take

him. him in.”

But even as he spoke the bittern sprang out of the bush and flew up stream. I at once shot him on the wing. Jim had turned his back on the bittern in disgust the instant he flew, and looking at me as I raised my gun and fired, exclaimed, "Mon Dieu, monsieur, what kind of a gun is that as goes off before you take aim? Was it an accident, sir, or did you fire at anything?"

"Look ahead," I answered.

Jim turned around, and now saw the bittern lying dead on the water close by.

He picked him up with a mystified expression, and looking at me, asked, “Did you kill him, sir?”

"When you fired then ?" "Of course.

"And the bird a-flyin' through the air all the time! Well, sir, I never saw that thing done before, and you're the greatest hunter for a gentleman that ever came to these lakes."

Imagine, my sporting friend, you who can cut down a dozen woodcock in cover without missing a shot, how remote those lakes must be where shooting on the wing was never heard of, and bringing down one lubberly bittern in the open is sufficient to establish one's reputation as a great hunter!

We soon saw a flock of sheldrake swimming on the river. As we drew near, they scampered away over the glassy surface