ushed out into the stream, and
we went swiftly down toward Round Lake.

A Saranac boat is one of the finest things that the skill of man has
ever produced under the inspiration of the wilderness. It is a frail
shell, so light that a guide can carry it on his shoulders with ease,
but so dexterously fashioned that it rides the heaviest waves like a
duck, and slips through the water as if by magic. You can travel in
it along the shallowest rivers and across the broadest lakes, and make
forty or fifty miles a day, if you have a good guide.

Everything depends, in the Adirondacks, as in so many other regions of
life, upon your guide. If he is selfish, or surly, or stupid, you will
have a bad time. But if he is an Adirondacker of the best old-fashioned
type,--now unhappily growing more rare from year to year,--you will find
him an inimitable companion, honest, faithful, skilful and cheerful. He
is as independent as a prince, and the gilded youths and finicking fine
ladies who attempt to patronise him are apt to make but a sorry show
before his solid and undisguised contempt. But deal with him man to man,
and he will give you a friendly, loyal service which money cannot buy,
and teach you secrets of woodcraft and lessons in plain, self-reliant
manhood more valuable than all the learning of the schools. Such a
guide was mine, rejoicing in the Scriptural name of Hosea, but commonly
called, in brevity and friendliness, "Hose."

As we entered Round Lake on this fair morning, its surface was as smooth
and shining as a mirror. It was too early yet for the tide of travel
which sends a score of boats up and down this thoroughfare every day;
and from shore to shore the water was unruffled, except by a flock
of sheldrakes which had been feeding near Plymouth Rock, and now
went skittering off into Weller Bay with a motion between flying and
swimming, leaving a long wake of foam behind them.

At such a time as this you can see the real colour of these Adirondack
lakes. It is not blue, as romantic writers so often describe it, nor
green, like some of those wonderful Swiss lakes; although of course
it reflects the colour of the trees along the shore; and when the wind
stirs it, it gives back the hue of the sky, blue when it is clear, gray
when the clouds are gathering, and sometimes as black as ink under the
shadow of storm. But when it is still, the water itself is like that
river which one of the poets has described as

"Flowing