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Tawabinisay had said that Kawagama was the only lake in its district. We therefore became quite excited at this sapphire promise. Our packs were thrown aside, and like school-boys we raced down the declivity to the shore. We found ourselves peering through the thicket at a little reed and grass grown body of water a few acres in extent.
I give his name because I have personally talked with his guides, and heard their circumstantial accounts of his performances. Unless three or four woodsmen are fearful liars, I do Mr. Clement no injustice. Since then Tawabinisay had hidden himself behind his impenetrable grin. So you can easily see that the discovery of Kawagama would be a feat worthy even high hills.
We found that individual erecting a rack of many projecting arms like a Greek warrior's trophy at the precise spot where the first rays of the morning sun would strike it. On the projecting arms he purposed hanging his wet clothes. "Doug," said we, "do you want to go to Kawagama to-morrow?" Doug turned on us a sardonic eye. He made no direct answer, but told the following story:
But this man, named Clement, a banker from Peoria, had proved unworthy. Tawabinisay told how he caught trout, many, many trout, and piled them on the shores of Kawagama to defile the air. Subsequently this same "sportsman" buried another big catch on the beach of Superior. These and other exploits finally earned him his exclusion from the delectable land.
Throughout the entire distance to Kawagama were the fresh axe-blazes the Indian had made the day before. These were neither so frequent nor as plainly cut as a white man's trail, but each represented a pause long enough for the clip of an axe. In addition the trail had been made passable for a canoe. That meant the cutting out of overhanging branches wherever they might catch the bow of the craft.
An experienced Indian had pronounced it a deer. Nevertheless it was a squirrel. We approached Kawagama by way of a gradual slope clothed with a beautiful beech and maple forest whose trees were the tallest of those species I have ever seen. Ten minutes brought us to the shore.
Probably more expeditions to Kawagama have been planned in February than would fill a volume with an account of anticipated adventures. Only, none of them ever came off.
Without further speech, we turned back to where Dick was guarding the packs. That youth we found profoundly indifferent. "Kawagama," we cried, "a quarter-mile ahead." He turned on us a lack-lustre eye. "You going to camp here?" he inquired dully. "Course not! We'll go on and camp at the lake." "All right," he replied.
That condition of affairs might not occur for years to come. Therefore the line was cut out clear for a width of twenty feet. We continued along it as along a trail until we discovered our last lake a body of water possessing many radiating arms. This was the nearest we came to the real Kawagama.
In the high country the head-waters are never more than a few miles distant; and at the same time the magnitude of this indicated a lake rather than a spring as the supply. The lake might be Kawagama. Our packs had grown to be very heavy, for they had already the weight of nine hours piled on top. And the stream was exceedingly difficult to follow.
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