their life
as they try to narrate it to one who may be interested.

[Illustration: 48 TRYING MOMENTS]

From here on was through beautiful little lakes, and the voyagers rigged
blanket sails on the big canoes, while we towed behind. Then came the
river and the rapids, which we ran, darting between rocks, bumping on
sunken stones--shooting fairly out into the air, all but turning over
hundreds of times. One day the Abwees glided out in the big lake
Tesmiaquemang, and saw the steamer going to Bais des Pierres. We hailed
her, and she stopped, while the little canoes danced about in the swell
as we were loaded one by one. On the deck above us the passengers
admired a kind of boat the like of which had not before appeared in
these parts.

At Bais des Pierres we handed over the residue of the commissaries of
the Abwee-Chemun to Jimmie Friday, including personally many pairs of
well-worn golf-breeches, sweaters, rubber coats, knives which would be
proscribed by law in New York. If Jimmie ever parades his solemn
wilderness in these garbs, the owls will laugh from the trees. Our
simple forest friend laid in his winter stock--traps, flour, salt,
tobacco, and pork, a new axe--and accompanied us back down the lake
again on the steamer. She stopped in mid-stream, while Jimmie got his
bundles into his "bark" and shoved off, amid a hail of "good-byes."

The engine palpitated, the big wheel churned the water astern, and we
drew away. Jimmie bent on his paddle with the quick body-swing habitual
to the Indian, and after a time grew a speck on the reflection of the
red sunset in Temiscamingue.

The Abwees sat sadly leaning on the after-rail, and agreed that Jimmie
was "a lovely Injun." Jimmie had gone into the shade of the overhang of
the cliffs, when the Norseman started violently up, put his hands in his
pockets, stamped his foot, said, "By George, fellows, any D. F. would
call this a sporting trip!"

THE SOLEDAD GIRLS

"TO-NIGHT I am going down to my ranch--the Soledad--in my private car,"
said the manager of the Mexican International Railroad, "and I would
like the Captain and you to accompany me."

The Captain and I were only too glad; so in process of time we awoke to
find our car sidetracked on the Soledad, which is in the state of
Coahuila, Mexico. The chaparral spread around, rising and falling in the
swell of the land, until it beat against the blue ridge of the Sierra
Santa Rosa, miles to the north. Here and t