hat, and I carried home a pack of furs that bro't me
near two hundred dollars."

CHAPTER XXXI.

OUT OF THE WOODS--THE THOUSAND ISLANDS--CAPE VINCENT--BASS FISHING
HOME--A SEARCHER AFTER TRUTH--AN INTERRUPTION--FINIS.

We floated quietly down the Rackett, carrying our boats around the
falls, shooting like an arrow down the rapids, or gliding along under
the shadows of the gigantic forest trees that line the long, calm
reaches of that beautiful river. We shook hands and parted with our
boatmen at the pleasant village of Pottsdam, where we arrived the
second evening after leaving Tupper's Lake. We found our baggage, and
it was a pleasant thing to change our long beards for shaved faces,
and our forest costume for the garniture of the outer man after the
fashion of civilization. We took the cars for Ogdensburgh, and the
next morning found us steaming up the majestic St. Lawrence, towards
that paradise of fishermen, the Thousand Islands. We stopped a couple
of days at Alexandria Bay, and passed on to Cape Vincent, a beautiful
village situated a mile or two below where the river takes its
departure from the broad lake beyond. This pleasant little town is
built upon a wide sweep of tableland, overlooking the river in front,
and the open lake on the west. It is accessible both by the lake and
river, having two or three arrivals' and departures of steamboats each
way daily, and being the terminus of the Rome and Watertown Railroad,
the great thoroughfare between Kingston and the central portion of the
Tipper Provinces and the States. It is a delightful place in the hot
summer months, with a climate unequalled for healthfulness, a cool
breeze always fanning it from the water, and in the vicinity the best
bass fishing to be found on this continent.

Opposite, and just below the town, is Carlton Island, on which stand
the ruins of an old French fortification, the walls and trenches and
the solitary chimneys, from which the wooden barracks have rotted or
been burned away, remain as melancholy testimonials of the bloody
strifes between the red men of the forest, and the pioneers of
civilization who were driving them from the hunting grounds of
their fathers.

The black bass of the St. Lawrence and Ontario, are the "gamest" fish
that swim, and they are nowhere found in such abundance as in the
neighborhood of Cape Vincent. On the outer edge of the bar, near the
head of Carlton Island, we caught between seventy and eighty