ructions ostentatiously tucked in his outer pocket.
Rolf, unknown to any one else but Warren, had a duplicate, wrapped in
waterproof, hidden in an inside pocket.

Bill was A1 on the river; a kind and gentle old woodman, much stronger
than he looked. He knew the value of fur and the danger of wetting it,
so he took no chances in doubtful rapids. This meant many portages and
much hard labour.

I wonder if the world realizes the hard labour of the portage or carry?
Let any man who seeks for light, take a fifty-pound sack of flour on his
shoulders and walk a quarter of a mile on level ground in cool weather.
Unless he is in training, he will find it a heavy burden long before
he is half-way. Suppose, instead of a flour sack, the burden has sharp
angles; the bearer is soon in torture. Suppose the weight carried be
double; then the strain is far more than doubled. Suppose, finally,
the road be not a quarter mile but a mile, and not on level but through
swamps, over rocks, logs, and roots, and the weather not cool, but
suffocating summer weather in the woods, with mosquitoes boring into
every exposed part, while both hands are occupied, steadying the burden
or holding on to branches for help up steep places--and then he will
have some idea of the horror of the portage; and there were many of
these, each one calling for six loaded and five light trips for each
canoe-man. What wonder that men will often take chances in some fierce
rapid, rather than to make a long carry through the fly-infested woods.

It was weighty evidence of Bill's fidelity that again and again they
made a portage around rapids he had often run, because in the present
case he was in sacred trust of that much prized commodity--fur.

Eighty miles they called it from Warren's to Albany, but there were many
halts and carries which meant long delay, and a whole week was covered
before Bill and Rolf had passed the settlements of Glens Falls, Fort
Edward, and Schuylerville, and guided their heavily laden canoe on the
tranquil river, past the little town of Troy. Loafers hailed them from
the bank, but Bill turned a deaf ear to all temptation; and they pushed
on happy in the thought that now their troubles were over; the last
rapid was past; the broad, smooth waters extended to their port.

Chapter 54. Albany

Only a man who in his youth has come at last in sight of some great city
he had dreamed of all his life and longed to see, can enter into Rolf's
feel