A very light fog lay over the water of [[42]]Batchawana Bay when the travellers started, but it had been dispelled by the time they rounded the point which marks the end of the bay. Here the open lake lay before them in all that splendor of a summer day, which one can experience in such perfection nowhere else but along the wild rocky shores of Lake Superior, when waves and wind seem to have gone to sleep for a long time, and when no fog hides the sight of green hills far and near.
White gulls sailed in the air on almost motionless wings, and from the spruces on shore came the clear whistle of the white-throat, one of the hardiest little songsters of the North, whose cheering voice may often be heard through a thick fog, in which one cannot see ten yards ahead.
Ray was glad to see the lake so quiet, but the feeling that he was travelling along the shore of the ocean came over him again. “My father,” he asked timidly, “are we travelling now where the lake is very big?”
“Yes, my son,” replied Ganawa, “on our [[43]]left toward the west the lake is very big, sixty leagues or more; but it is still much bigger, twice as big toward the northwest, toward the large island of Menong and Thunder Bay, where the Sleeping Giant lies on the rocks.”
The boy asked no more. He dipped in his light paddle in unison with Ganawa and Bruce, and his fear left him as he came under the spell of the scene which was at the same time beautiful and sublime. Mile after mile they glided along in silence. Some small islands to the northwest had been left behind. Westward the lake stretched out endlessly to the horizon, where the water seemed to rise to blend and unite with the sky. However, the nearness of the shore on their right made the lad feel that they were safe, although the steep brown rocks looked forbidding enough and the forests on the high hills appeared almost black, because the travellers had to look at them against the light of the sun. After a while, the lad grew dull toward the beauty [[44]]and sublimity of the scene, and his healthy physical nature asserted itself. He had hoped that Ganawa would stop for breakfast at the end of the bay, but the old hunter had not even thought of stopping, to judge from the way he steered out of the bay. The lad was therefore more than glad when Ganawa steered toward a point and remarked, “My sons, we land there to eat.”
It seemed to Ray as if it must be almost noon, but Ganawa told him that it was still early in the morning, that they had made about eight leagues and that the place, where by this time they had landed, was called by English traders Coppermine Point. The Indians, he said, had no name for it, because there were too many points like it all along the shore of the Big Lake. [[45]]
CHAPTER V
THE WHITE BOY LEARNS
Ganawa seemed now to have plenty of time. He and Bruce lifted the canoe out of the water so that the lapping of the waves would not cause it to chafe on the rocks, for a canoe is very easily injured, and an Indian birch-bark is even more sensitive to rough handling than a white man’s canoe.