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where they meet with a ready sale for mittens made here in the woods are known to be "made upon honor." No buff-colored sheepskin comes from the shores of Raquette Lake, nor is the stout buckskin spoiled by destructive materials used to expedite the tanning.

Since the above was written, I am informed by my friend B―n that another family, composed of a man, his wife, and seven children, has emigrated to Raquette Lake. This woman—the only one now on the shores of the Raquette-took, last summer, an infant six months old, and a daughter fourteen years of age, and started for a clearing thirty miles distant, on a visit. Now carrying the boat on her head around the rapids in one place two miles on a stretch while the girl lugged along the infant and oars-now stemming the swift current, and anon floating over the bosom of a calm lake, she pursued her toilsome way— accomplishing the thirty miles by night. What think you of that? As Captain Cuttle would say, "she is a woman as is a woman." To make a visit of thirty miles through an unbroken forest, with a babe six months old, and a girl only fourteen years of age, and carry and row her own boat the whole distance,

VISIT OF THIRTY MILES.

233

is "spinning street yarn" on a large scale. I hope she had a glorious gossip to pay her for her trouble. It shows most conclusively that the visiting propensity, so strong in woman, is not a conventional thing, but inherent-belonging to her very nature.

This woman deserves to be the first on Raquette Lake. She bids fair to have seven children more, and I trust, when she dies, a monument will be erected to

her memory.

Yours, &c

XXVI.

MOOSE LAKES-" MURDERER'S POINT". -A GRAVE IN THE

FOREST-TROUTING-A FAMILY OF THIRTEEN GIRLS

66

RIDING BARE BACK"-A CURIOUS HORSE RACE.

August.

DEAR H

FROM the Raquette your nearest way out of the woods is towards the Black River country. Ascending the Brown Tract Inlet four miles, you carry your boat over a portage two miles in extent to the Eighth Moose Lake, which forms the summit level of the waters of this region-those on the west flowing west into the Black River. This sheet of water is the first of a chain of lakes, eight in number, connected by streams, and forming a group of surpassing beauty. Being on the height of land, it is filled wholly by springs and rills, and of course its water is unrivalled in clearness and coldness. It is completely embo

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somed in trees, while a beach of sand, white as the driven snow, and almost as fine as table salt, shows between the green frame work of the forest and the lake, presenting a beautiful and strange contrast here in this land of rocks and cliffs. The bottom is composed of this white sand also, and can be seen through the clear water at an astonishing depth. In such cold water, with such a clear bottom, how can the trout be otherwise than delicious?

This charming sheet of water is about three miles in length, with an average width of a mile and a half.

The seven lakes that follow are not a mere repetition of the first, but vary both in size and shape, with a different frame-work of hills. The change is ever from beauty to beauty, yet a separate description would seem monotonous.

There they repose, like a bright chain in the forest, the links connected by silver bars. You row slowly through one to its outlet, and then, entering a clear stream, overhung with bushes, or fringed with lofty trees, seem to be suddenly absorbed by the wilderness. At length, however, you emerge as from a cavern, and lo! an untroubled lake, with all its varia

tions of coast, and timber, and islands, greets the eye. Through this you also pass like one in a dream, wondering why such beauty is wasted where the eye of man rarely beholds it. Another narrow outlet receives you, and guiding your frail canoe along the rapid current, you are again swallowed up by the wilderness, to be born anew in a lovelier scene. Thus on, as if under a wizard's spell, you move along, alternately lost in the narrow channels, and struggling to escape the rocks on which the current would drive you, then floating over a broad expanse, extending as far as the eye can see into the mountains beyond.

A ride through these eight lakes is an episode in a man's life he can never forget. It furnishes a new experience—gives rise to a new train of thoughts and feelings, and opens to the dweller of our cities an entirely new world.

They vary in size from two to six miles, except the fifth and eighth, which are mere ponds. Thus, for more than twenty miles, you float through this primeval wilderness in a skiff that can be carried on the head, and yet are not compelled to take it from the

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