"That's so," said Hubbard. "Take things as they come and make the best of them—that's good philosophy. I was thinking that here it is the last of August, and we don't know where we are; and it bothered me some as I lay there in the tent. But we've done our best and ought to be satisfied."
In the afternoon I took my rod and went about three miles to the westward, where I came upon an isolated pond with no apparent outlet. Everywhere I could see the trout jumping, and by sundown had as long a string of them as I could conveniently carry. It was an hour after dark when I reached camp. George had returned, and they were beginning to fear that I was lost.
George had climbed the mountains, and he reported a fair line of travel to the northwest, with a "long lake that looked like a river," and, some distance northwest of that, "big water" and a tolerably good route for portages. What he told us led Hubbard to decide to continue on with the canoe and our entire outfit. George brought back with him two grouse he had shot.
The next morning (Tuesday, September 1) Hubbard was much better, and we began September with a renewed effort. It was rough and painful portaging over rocks and knolls. Every forty or fifty rods we came upon deep ponds with water so clear we could see the pebbles on the bottom. Between these ponds boulders were piled indiscriminately. In directing our course to the northwest we avoided the mountains that had lain just ahead. For two days we pushed on among the boulders, then over a wide marsh and through a heavy spruce growth, which brought us, on September 3d, to George's "lake that looked like a river." Let us call it Mary Lake.
Along Lake Mary we paddled, in the pouring rain that began that day, some five miles to its western end; and there, near a creek that flowed into it, we found the remains of an old Indian camp. George looked the camp over critically and remarked:
"The beggars killed two caribou, and they broke every bone up and boiled out the last drop of grease."
"What was it—a summer or a winter camp?" asked Hubbard.
"A summer," said George. "And they'd been fishing, too. There's a good fishing place—just try it!"
We did try it, and we had a fairly good catch of large trout. For supper we had a few of the trout boiled, together with the water, with one spoonful of flour for each man stirred in. We ate the fish entire, entrails, head, and all, and from that time on we let no part of the fish we caught be thrown away. Everything now in the way of food George divided carefully into three equal parts, even the fish broth. By this time we had not enough flour on hand to make more than half a dozen cakes of bread, and we continued to use only a spoonful or two a day for each man, mixing it with game or fish broth; in this way we hoped it would satisfy to some extent our craving for grain, and last longer.
As evening approached the sky cleared, and a big full moon tipped the fir trees with silver and set Lake Mary to gleaming. The air was filled with the perfume of the balsam and spruce, and it acted as a tonic on our spirits and drove away the depression of the day's work in the rain. Hubbard seemed to be as full of vim as ever, and all of us were quite contented.