had passed into muscle.  Lake Degetus, as pretty a pocket lake as there is, followed the carry.  Next came Lake Ambajeejus, larger, but hardly less lovely.  Those who dislike long names may use its shorter Indian title, Umdo.  We climbed a granite crag draped with moss long as the beard of a Druid,—­a crag on the south side of Ambajeejus or Umdo.  Thence we saw Katahdin, noble as ever, unclouded in the sunny morning, near, and yet enchantingly vague, with the blue sky which surrounded it.  It was still an isolate pyramid rising with no effect from the fair blue lakes and the fair green sea of the birch-forest,—­a brilliant sea of woods, gay as the shallows of ocean shot through with sunbeams and sunlight reflected upward from golden sands.

We sped along all that exquisite day, best of all our poetic voyage.  Sometimes we drifted and basked in sunshine, sometimes we lingered in the birchen shade; we paddled from river to lake, from lake to river again; the rapids whirled us along, surging and leaping under us with magnificent gallop; frequent carries struck in, that we might not lose the forester in the waterman.  It was a fresh world that we traversed on our beautiful river-path,—­new as if no other had ever parted its overhanging bowers.

At noon we floated out upon Lake Pemadumcook, the largest bulge of the Penobscot, and irregular as the verb To Be.  Lumbermen name it Bammydumcook:  Iglesias insisted upon this as the proper reading; and as he was the responsible man of the party, I accepted it.  Woods, woody hills, and woody mountains surround Bammydumcook.  I have no doubt parts of it are pretty and will be famous in good time; but we saw little.  By the time we were fairly out in the lake and away from the sheltering shore, a black squall to windward, hiding all the West, warned us to fly, for birches swamp in squalls.  We deemed that Birch, having brought us through handsomely, deserved a better fate:  swamped it must not be.  We plied paddle valiantly, and were almost safe behind an arm of the shore when the storm overtook us, and in a moment more, safe, with a canoe only half-full of Bammydumcook water.

It is easy to speak in scoffing tone; but when that great roaring blackness sprang upon us, and the waves, showing their white teeth, snarled around, we were far from being in the mood to scoff.  It is impossible to say too much of the charm of this gentle scenery, mingled with the charm of this adventurous sailing.  And then there were no mosquitoes, no alligators, no serpents uncomfortably hugging the trees, no miasmas lurking near; and blueberries always.  Dust there was none, nor the things that make dust.  But Iglesias and I were breathing AIR, —­Air sweet, tender, strong, and pure as an ennobling love.  It was a day very happy, for Iglesias and I were near what we both love almost best of all the dearly-beloveds.  It is such influence as this that rescues the thought and the hand of an artist from enervating mannerism.  He cannot be satisfied with vague blotches of paint to convey impressions so distinct and vivid as those he is forced to take direct from a Nature like this.  He must be true and powerful.