Now the way you get to Temple Camp is to hike up through Catskill village till you get to the old turnpike road, and then go straight along that till you come to a big boarding house, where there are a lot of people sitting on the porch waiting for breakfast or dinner or supper, or time to go to bed. Then you hit the road up through the woods till you come to a turtle. I guess he isn't there now, but anyway, he was there last year. Then you cut up through the woods and follow the scouts' signs, and you'll come out at Leeds--that's a village. You'll see all the summer people waiting for their mail at the post office. Some of them will say, "Oh, there go some boy scouts, aren't they cute?" They always say that. There's a stationery store there too, where you can buy fishhooks and marshmallows, and other things to eat. I don't mean you eat fishhooks. Anyway, you go down Main Street till you come to a smell like rotten wood and then you turn in where the willow trees are and you come to an old sawmill. If you holloa from there, they can hear you at camp. Then you cut through the woods and follow the trail till all of a sudden you come plunk out on the edge of the lake and it's all surrounded by woods. That's Black Lake, and believe me, black is my favorite color when it comes to lakes. Then you go across in the boats to Temple Camp. Mr. John Temple started Temple Camp. He's rich and owns a lot of railroads and things. He used to be mad at the scouts, but after a while when he saw what kind of fellows scouts are, he got glad at them and started Temple Camp. He's awful grouchy when you first see him, but you should worry about that. Once, when he was out west about some railroads, he saw Jeb Rushmore, who was a trapper and all that, and he was getting old, so Mr. Temple made him come to Temple Camp to be camp manager and live there. Oh, boy, you're going to see him in just a minute and I can hardly wait. CHAPTER XII TELLS ALL ABOUT OUR ROW ON BLACK LAKE So that's the way we went to Temple Camp, but there are short cuts to the Hudson besides that When we got near to the lake we all got anxious--you know how a fellow is when he's almost to a place he's been thinking about a lot. Doc Carson said, "I see the water is still wet." That was just to jolly Pee-wee. "That's because of the recent rains," I said. "The which?" Artie asked me. "You think you're smart talking about _recent rains,_ don't you?" Pee-wee shouted. "You got that out of a book." "I bet there'll be a lot of troops there this summer," El Sawyer said. Pretty soon I saw he was right, too, because five boats came across to get us and there was a strange scout in every single one of them. Uncle Jeb was waiting at the landing on the other side to meet us, and oh, cracky, didn't it look good to see the big pavilion and the tents and patrol cabins upside down in the water. There were a lot of scouts waiting too, and I could see the camp was pretty full.