It frightened me often to see the men take their packs where they did.  Sometimes it was over a great bed of boulders, where the reindeer moss was growing.  This moss is a delicate grey-green colour, exquisitely beautiful in form as well, and as a background for the dark spruces is wonderfully effective.  We found it growing luxuriantly almost everywhere, except in the burned districts, and in places it is six inches in height.  When dry, it is brittle, and may be crumbled to powder in the hands, but when wet is very much the consistency of jelly, and just as slippery.  Through the wooded land the soil appeared to be simply a tangle of fallen and decayed tree-trunks grown over with thick moss of another variety, in which you sank ankle deep, while dark perilous looking holes yawned on every side, making you feel that if once you went in you might never appear again.  Sometimes our way led along a fine bear trail on a sandy terrace where the wood growth was small and scattered, and where the walking was smooth, and even as that of a city street, but much softer and pleasanter.  There were many bear trails through this lower Nascaupee country, though we did not again see any bears, and one might actually think the trails had been chosen with an eye to beauty.  The woods were very fine, the spruces towering far above us straight as arrows.  They were, many of them, splendid specimens of their kind, and one I measured was nine feet in circumference.  Here and there some balsam was found among the spruces.  These were true virgin forests, but their extent was limited to the narrow river valleys.  Out beyond, the hill-tops rose treeless and barren.

On the portages the outfit was taken forward by short stages, and I had a good deal of waiting to do.  The men did not like to leave me alone lest I might possibly encounter a bear, and I had many warnings to keep my rifle ready, and not to leave my waiting-place.  Secretly I rather hoped a bear would come along for I thought I could manage him if he did not take me unawares.

Besides the interest of watching for the bear I hoped to meet, I had, while we travelled in the more open parts, the hills both up and down the river to look at, and they were very beautiful with their ever-changing colour.  Mount Sawyer and Mount Elizabeth were behind us now, and away ahead were the blue ridges of hills with one high and barren, standing out above the rest, which I named Bald Mountain.  I wondered much what we should find there.  What we did find was a very riotous rapid and a very beautiful Sunday camp.

Waiting in the lower wooded parts was not as pleasant.  Once I announced my intention of setting up my fishing-rod and going down to the river to fish, while the rest of the outfit was being brought up.  Sudden consternation overspread the faces of the men.  In a tone of mingled alarm, disapproval, suspicion, George exclaimed:  “Yes; that is just what I was afraid you would be doing.  I think you had better sit right down there by the rifles.  There are fresh bear tracks about here, and Job says they run down there by the river.”