Sam Bolton and Dick finally got under way.  After an hour they arrived opposite the mouth of a tributary stream.  This Sam announced as the Mattawishguia.  Immediately they turned to it.

The Mattawishguia would be variously described; in California as a river, in New England as a brook, in Superior country as a trout stream.  It is an hundred feet wide, full of rapids, almost all fast water, and, except in a few still pools, from a foot to two feet deep.  The bottom is of round stones.

Travel by canoe in such a stream is a farce.  The water is too fast to pole against successfully more than half the time; the banks are too overgrown for tracking with the tow-line.  About the only system is to get there in the best way possible.  Usually this meant that Dick waded at the bow and Sam at the stern, leaning strongly against the current.  Bowlders of all sorts harassed the free passage, stones rolled under the feet, holes of striking unexpectedness lay in wait, and the water was icy cold.  Once in a while they were able to paddle a few hundred feet.  Then both usually sat astride the ends of the canoe, their legs hanging in the water in order that the drippings might not fall inside.  As this was the early summer, they occasionally kicked against trees to drive enough of the numbness from their legs so that they could feel the bottom.

It was hard work and cold work and wearing, for it demanded its exact toll for each mile, and was as insistent for the effort at weary night as at fresh morning.

Dick, in the vigour of his young strength, seemed to like it.  The leisure of travel with the Indians had barely stretched his muscles.  Here was something against which he could exert his utmost force.  He rejoiced in it, taking great lungfuls of air, bending his shoulders, breaking through these outer defences of the North with wanton exuberance, blind to everything, deaf to everything, oblivious of all other mental and physical sensations except the delight of applying his skill and strength to the subduing of the stream.

But Sam, patient, uncomplaining, enduring, retained still the broader outlook.  He, too, fought the water and the cold, adequately and strongly, but it was with the unconsciousness of long habit.  His mind recognised the Forest as well as the Stream.  The great physical thrill over the poise between perfect health and the opposing of difficulties he had left behind him with his youth; as indeed he had, in a lesser sense, gained with his age an indifference to discomfort.  He was cognisant of the stillness of the woods, the presence of the birds and beasts, the thousand subtleties that make up the personality of the great forest.