We left our baggage-master
here with most of our luggage, to perfect his operations in the way
of jerking venison, intending to return the next day. We might have
left everything without a guard, so far as human depredations were
concerned. No bolts or bars would be necessary for its protection. In
the first place, nobody would visit the spot, and if they did, our
property would be perfectly protected by the law of the woods. It
would be doubtless carefully inspected by any curious banter passing
that way, but theft or robbery are unknown here. True, a bottle of
good liquor, if handled by a visitor, might lose somewhat of its
contents, but it would be drank to the health of the owner, and in a
spirit of good fellowship, and not of theft, all which would be
regarded by woodsmen as strictly within rule, there being, as Hank
Wood said, "no law agin it."
We left the first chain of ponds, and rowed some ten miles up the deep
and sluggish but narrow channel of the river, startling every little
way a deer from its propriety by our presence as it was feeding along
the shore. Few sportsmen ever visit this remote region, and it is
above the range of the lumbermen. We came to some rapids near the
outlet of the second chain of ponds, around which we walked, and up
which the boatmen pushed their little craft.
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