"It's my mark," said Horace. "I made it last August. Right here I found one of the diamonds."
"We must stop and do some prospecting!" cried Fred.
"No use," replied his brother. "I prospected all round here myself, and for a mile or so up the river. I didn't go any farther, but I've a notion that we'll have to go nearly to the head of the river to find the country we want."
On they went, shoving the canoe against the current with the iron-shod canoe poles. They had all been looking up the kind of soil in which diamonds are usually found, and now they closely observed the eroded banks on both sides of the river. According to Horace's theory, the river, or one of its tributary streams, must cut through the diamond-beds of blue clay. But as yet the shores showed nothing except ordinary sand and gravel.
Two miles farther the river broadened into a long, narrow lake, surrounded by low spruce-clad hills and edged with sprouting lily-pads. It was a great relief to the boys to be able to paddle, and they dashed rapidly to the head of the lake. There, rapids and a long carry confronted them! They had made little more than fifteen miles that day when finally they went into camp; they were almost too tired to cook supper. And they knew that that day's work was only a foretaste of what was coming, for from now on they would be continually "bucking the rapids."
The next day they found rapids in plenty, indeed. They seemed to come on an average of a quarter of a mile apart, and sometimes two or three in such close succession that it was scarcely worth while to launch the canoe again after the first portage. It was slow, toilsome work; they grew very tired as the afternoon wore on, and shortly before sunset they came to one of the worst spots they had yet encountered.
It was a pair of rapids, less than a hundred yards apart. Over the first one the water rushed among a medley of irregular boulders, and then, after some ten rods of smooth, swift current, poured down a cataract of several feet. Huge black rocks, split and tumbled, broke up the cataract, and the hoarse roar filled the pine woods with sound.
"I move we camp!" said Fred, eyeing this obstacle with disgust.
"Let's get over the carry first and camp at the top," Peter urged. "Then we'll have a clear start for morning."
Fred grumbled that they would certainly be fresher in the morning than they were then, but they unpacked the canoe, and began to carry the outfit around the broken water, as they had done so many times that day. Once at the head of the upper rapid Horace began to get out the cooking-utensils.