darning-needle. It was
cheerful to meet with such general encouragement in our small
adventure. But the trouble was to decide which way to go.

Nicatous lies near the top of a watershed about a thousand feet high.
From the region round about it at least seven canoeable rivers descend
to civilization. The Narraguagus and the Union on the south, the
Passadumkeag on the west, the Sisladobsis and the St. Croix on the
north, and the two branches of the Machias or Kowahshiscook on the
east; to say nothing of the Westogus and the Hackmatack and the Mopang.
Here were names to stir the fancy and paralyze the tongue. What a joy
to follow one of these streams clear through its course and come out of
the woods in our own craft--from Nicatous to the sea!

It was perhaps something in the name, some wild generosity of
alphabetical expenditure, that led us to the choice of the
Kowahshiscook, or west branch of the Machias River. Or perhaps it was
because neither of our guides had been down that stream, and so the
whole voyage would be an exploration, with everybody on the same level
of experience. An easy day's journey across the lake, and up Comb's
Brook, where the trout were abundant, and by a two-mile carry into
Horseshoe Lake, and then over a narrow hardwood ridge, brought us to
Green Lake, where we camped for the night in a new log shanty.

Here we were at the topmost source--_fons et origo_--of our chosen
river. This single spring, crystal-clear and ice-cold, gushing out of
the hillside in a forest of spruce and yellow birch and sugar maple,
gave us the clue that we must follow for a week through the wilderness.

But how changed was that transparent rivulet after it entered the lake.
There the water was pale green, translucent but semi-opaque, for at a
depth of two or three feet the bottom was hardly visible. The lake was
filled, I believe, with some minute aquatic growth which in the course
of a thousand years or so would transform it into a meadow. But
meantime the mystical water was inhabited, especially around the mouth
of the spring, by huge trout to whom tradition ascribed a singular and
provoking disposition. They would take the bait, when the fancy moved
them: but the fly they would always refuse, ignoring it with calm
disdain, or slapping at it with their tails and shoving it out of their
way as they played on the surface in the summer evenings. This was the
mysterious reputation of the trout of Green Lake, handed dow