The Caribou dashed away and by a slight limp showed that
he was in sanctuary. The 20-yard estimate proved too long; it was
only 16 yards, which put my picture a little out of focus.
There never was a day, and rarely an hour of each day, that we did
not see several Caribou. And yet I never failed to get a thrill
at each fresh one. "There's a Caribou," one says with perennial
intensity that is evidence of perennial pleasure in the sight.
There never was one sighted that did not give us a happy sense of
satisfaction - the thought "This is what we came for."
CHAPTER XXXIV
AYLMER LAKE
One of my objects was to complete the ambiguous shore line of Aylmer
Lake. The first task was to find the lake. So we left the narrows
and pushed on and on, studying the Back map, vainly trying to identify
points, etc. Once or twice we saw gaps ahead that seemed to open
into the great inland sea of Aylmer. But each in turn proved a
mere bay. - On August 12 we left the narrows; on the 13th and 14th
we journeyed westward seeking the open sea. On the morning of the
15th we ran into the final end of the farthest bay we could discover
and camped at the mouth of a large river entering in.
As usual, we landed - Preble, Billy, and I - to study topography,
Weeso to get firewood, and curiously enough, there was more firewood
here than we had seen since leaving Artillery Lake. The reason of
this appeared later.
I was utterly puzzled. We had not yet found Aylmer Lake, and had
discovered an important river that did not seem to be down on any
map.
We went a mile or two independently and studied the land from all
the high hills; evidently we had crossed the only great sheet of
water in the region. About noon, when all had assembled at camp,
I said: "Preble, why, isn't this Lockhart's River, at the western
extremity of Aylmer Lake?" The truth was dawning on me.
He also had been getting light and slowly replied: "I have forty-nine
reasons why it is, and none at all why it isn't."
There could be no doubt of it now. The great open sea of Aylmer was
a myth. Back never saw it; he passed in a fog, and put down with a
query the vague information given him by the Indians. This little
irregular lake, much like Clinton-Colden, was Aylmer. We had covered
its length and were now at its farthest western end, at the mouth
of Lockhart's River.
How I did wish that explorers would post up the names of the
streets; it is almost as bad as in New York City. What a lot of
time we might have saved had we known that Sandy Bay was in Back's
three-fingered peninsula!
