As soon as they had dispatched their breakfast, the band about to depart loaded their canoes with traps, guns, camp-kettles, and the provisions needed for immediate use; and, wishing Gaut Gurley a happy and successful time at his solitary station, pushed merrily away into the broad lake, turned their course northward, and sped on their voyage. A few miles’ rowing brought them to the great inlet, which, like the principal inlets to the lakes below, was another reach of the Androscoggin, flowing directly from the east through a channel, still nearly a hundred yards in width and nearly three miles in length, from its entrance into one lake to the point where it debouches from the other. After a row of an hour up this channel, made interesting and impressive by the magnificent colonnades of princely pines, that, as far as the eye could reach, stood towering away in lessening perspective along its banks, they suddenly emerged into the bright and far-stretching waters of the unmapped Oquossak, which lay nestling and inflected among the dark green cliffs of the boldly intersecting mountains, like some rough, unshapen gem, gleaming out from the rubbish of a mine. And laying their course northeasterly, for the distant bay receiving the waters of the confluent streams before described, they now pulled away through the lake, in as direct a line as its irregular form would permit. And now, skirting long reaches of its deeply-wooded shores, from which the old forest, never broken by the axe, and rarely ever trod by the foot of the white man, was seen, stretching away back, lift after lift, in pristine grandeur, to the tall summits of the amphitheatric mountains,--now shooting athwart, under some dark headland that stood out boldly disputing the empire with the water, and now threading their way among the clustering green islands that studded the bright and beautiful expanse,--they rowed steadily onward for hours, and at length were gladdened by the sight of the dim but well-remembered outlines of the pointed bay, whose farthest shore was to be the home and haven for most of their number, during their present sojourn in this wild and remote fastness of the wilderness. To row in, disembark their luggage, select sites for camps, to build those camps, so far as to make them serve for shelters for the night, and to prepare and eat their suppers, occupied the company, who had all decided to remain there that night through the remainder of the day till bed-time. The next morning, after an early breakfast, Codman and Tomah took leave of their companions, and proceeded on further up the lake to their allotted station; leaving the two Elwoods, and their respective hunting companions, to complete their camps, which were situated in near vicinity, get all in readiness, and the next day enter in earnest on the main business of the campaign.