It was interesting to see how closely the guides could guess at the weight of the fish by looking at them.  The ouananiche are much longer in proportion to their weight than trout, and a novice almost always overestimates them.  But the guides were not deceived.  “This one will weigh four pounds and three-quarters, and this one four pounds, but that one not more than three pounds; he is meagre, M’sieu’, but he is meagre.”  When we went ashore and tried the spring balance (which every angler ought to carry with him, as an aid to his conscience), the guides guess usually proved to be within an ounce or two of the fact.  Any one of the senses can be educated to do the work of the others.  The eyes of these experienced fishermen were as sensitive to weight as if they had been made to use as scales.

Below the last fall the Peribonca flows for a score of miles with an unbroken, ever-widening stream, through low shores of forest and bush and meadow.  Near its mouth the Little Peribonca joins it, and the immense flood, nearly two miles wide, pours into Lake St. John.  Here we saw the first outpost of civilisation—­a huge unpainted storehouse, where supplies are kept for the lumbermen and the new settlers.  Here also we found the tiny, lame steam launch that was to carry us back to the Hotel Roberval.  Our canoes were stowed upon the roof of the cabin, and we embarked for the last stage of our long journey.

As we came out of the river-mouth, the opposite shore of the lake was invisible, and a stiff “Nor’wester” was rolling big waves across the bar.  It was like putting out into the open sea.  The launch laboured and puffed along for four or five miles, growing more and more asthmatic with every breath.  Then there was an explosion in the engine-room.  Some necessary part of the intestinal machinery had blown out.  There was a moment of confusion.  The captain hurried to drop the anchor, and the narrow craft lay rolling in the billows.

What to do?  The captain shrugged his shoulders like a Frenchman.  “Wait here, I suppose.”  But how long?  “Who knows?  Perhaps till to-morrow; perhaps the day after.  They will send another boat to look for us in the course of time.”

But the quarters were cramped; the weather looked ugly; if the wind should rise, the cranky launch would not be a safe cradle for the night.  Damon and I preferred the canoes, for they at least would float if they were capsized.  So we stepped into the frail, buoyant shells of bark once more, and danced over the big waves toward the shore.  We made a camp on a wind-swept point of sand, and felt like shipwrecked mariners.  But it was a gilt-edged shipwreck.  For our larder was still full, and as if to provide us with the luxuries as well as the necessities of life, Nature had spread an inexhaustible dessert of the largest and most luscious blueberries around our tents.