Rude But Efficient
Paddles Were Hastily Hewn From The Nearest Tree,
And Soon We Were All Gliding In Our Ten-Pound
Boat Over The Waves Of Ampersand, Which
Glittered In The Morning Sunlight.
To the guides
the boat was something astonishing; they could
not refrain from laughter to find that they were
really afloat in it, and pointed with surprise at
the waves, which could be seen through the
boat, rippling against its sides.
With the aid of
the boat, with prismatic compass and sextant, I
was able to secure an excellent map of the lake;
and we almost succeeded in catching a deer,
which was driven into the lake by a strange
hound. The dog lost the trail at the water, and
desiring to put him on the track, we paddled to
him. He scrambled into the boat with an air of
satisfaction, as if he had always travelled in just
such a thing. Soon we had regained the trail,
and making the mountains echo to his voice,
he again pursued the deer on into the trackless
forest.
"Continuing our work, we passed down into
the outlet, where, in trying to effect a landing,
we suddenly came face to face with a large
panther, which had evidently been watching us.
He fled at our approach.
"Our baggage was quickly packed, and the
temporary frame of the canoe having been taken
out and thrown away, we rolled up our boat and
put it in the bottom of a knapsack. . . . The same
day by noon we reached Cold Brook again, here
navigable. In an hour and a half we had
re-framed the canvas, cut out two paddles from a
dry cedar-tree, had dinner, loaded the boat, and
were off; easily gliding down stream to the
Saranac River. Three men, the heaped baggage in
the centre, and the solemn hound, who seemed
to consider himself part of the company, sitting
upright near the prow, forming in all a burden
of about one third of a ton, was a severe test of
the green boughs of which we had made the frame.
"Ascending the Saranac River, we struck out
into the broad Saranac Lake, some six miles
in length, and though the winds and the waves
buffeted us, the canvas sides of the boat
responding elastically to each beat of the waves, we got
safely along till near the Sister Islands, when, the
wind blowing very fresh, the white-capped
rollers began to pitch into the boat. The exertions
of the guides brought us under the lee shore, and
at evening we disembarked at Martin's."
Geographies, guide-books, and historical works
frequently give the length of Lake Champlain as
one hundred and fifty, or at the least one hundred
and forty miles. These distances are not correct.
The lake proper begins at a point near
Ticonderoga and ends not far from the boundary line of
the United States and Canada. Champlain is not
less than one hundred nor more than one hundred
and twelve miles long.
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