the canoes upon a crystal river that swirled along in eddies and sheets of colour. Sometimes it narrowed to a couple of hundred yards between rugged cliffs where the water raced towards a rapid, sometimes it broadened into wide, lake-like spaces; there were reaches of placid calm; there were stretches white with tumbling foam. The sun blazed down; we turned a sharp bend and surprised a deer; a porcupine waddled up against a pine-stem; a fish leaped in a golden pool; birds flashed and vanished; there was a silence, a stillness beyond all telling. Nuggets, gold dust, hairy men, six-shooters--nothing mattered!
It was, indeed, this loneliness, this entire absence of all other human signs, that gradually betrayed the truth. Where was the stream of frenzied gold-seekers? Where was the rush the papers mentioned? Beyond a few stray Indians on the fourth day, we saw no living being. Gallup's tales of terror began to lose their sting. Of real information he vouchsafed no single item. But who wanted real information? Rainy Lake City might be the legendary city of gold that lies beyond the mirages of the Lybian desert, for all I cared. The City of New York was out of sight. That was the important thing.
The series of wild, lonely camps lie blurred in the composite outline of a single camp; eight dawns combine into one; I remember clear night-skies ablaze with brilliant stars; I remember the moon rising behind the black wall of forest across the water. All night the river sang and whispered. Police courts and Mrs. Bernstein's room hid far away in the dim reaches of some former life. Behind these, again, lay a shadowy, forgotten Kent. There were haunting faces, veiled by distance, for a strange remoteness curtained the past with unreality. The wonder of the present dominated. These woods, this river, ruled the world, and somewhere in the heart of that old forest the legendary Wendigo, whose history I wrote later in a book, had its awful lair.
Owing to Gallup's trick of lengthening the journey,
our food gave out, but with fish, venison and partridge
