All this while their making the floats went slowly on; for the men thought it a great hardship to keep chopping of blocks, as they called it, while their fellows were picking up gold, though they knew they were to have their share of what they found, as much as if they had been all the while with them; but it seems there is a kind of satisfaction in the work of picking up gold, besides the mere gain. However, at length the gold failing, they began to think of their more immediate work, which was, going forward; and the carpenters having made three more floats, like flat-bottomed barges, which they brought to be able to carry their baggage and themselves too, if they thought fit, they began to embark and fall down the river; but they grew sick of their navigation in a very few days, for before they got to the lake, which was but three days' going, they ran several times on ground, and were obliged to lighten their floats to get them off again, then load again, and lighten again, and so off and on, till they were so tired of them that they would much rather have carried all their baggage, and have travelled by land; and, at last, they were forced to cast off two of them, and put all their baggage on board the other two, which, at best, though large, were but poor crazy things. At length they came in sight of their beloved lake, and the next day they entered into the open part, or sea of it, which they found was very large, and in some places very deep. Their floats, or by what other name they might be called, were by no means fit to carry them upon this inland sea; for if the water had been agitated by the least gust of wind, it would presently have washed over them, and have spoiled, if not sunk, their baggage; so they had no way to steer or guide them whenever they came into deep water, where they could not reach the ground with their poles. This obliged them, as soon as they came into the open lake, to keep close under one shore, that is to say, to the right hand, where the land falling away to the south and the south-by-east, seemed to carry them still forward on their way; the other side widening to the north, made the lake seem there to be really a sea, for they could not look over it, unless they went on shore and got upon some rising ground. Here, at first, they found the shore steep too, and a great depth of water close to land, which made them very uneasy; for, if the least gale of wind had disturbed the water, especially blowing from off the lake, they would have been shipwrecked close to the shore. However, after they had gone for two days along the side, by the help of towing and setting as well as they could, they came to a flatter shore and a fair strand, to their great joy and satisfaction.