Here comes one with a birch canoe. I get in. A tanned figure bare to the loins, without a sign of passion in his face, holds a paddle aloft as if awaiting my orders, a paddle curiously carved like a totem pole. “Row to that floating bed of water lilies yonder that I may see their upturned faces of gold.” The paddle dips noiselessly, the ripples make rings on the glimmering surface of the lake. I hear the water slush the bottom of the canoe. It sways until I can see over the sides and down into the green undergrowth of the lake where sun-fish and rainbow trout flash about in the slender thread-like leaves, as though they were swimming in the delicate, green foliage of a sunken tamarack forest or virgin growth of wild asparagus. What a cooling sensation it is to let the water trickle through the fingers as the canoe is paddled along. A little herd of four deer are coming down a woodland path to the border of the lake on the opposite shore. There are three does and a buck. He courts one of them, rubbing the underpart of his downy neck across her back. She shows her little teeth and leaps nimbly from under him, frisking her little cotton tail to and fro. I wonder for how many centuries that path has been trodden down by the light patter of their forefathers’ feet? I hear squirrels chattering, and I see them pursuing one another. A pair of wild ducks are diving in a little bay beyond, and another pair are mating near them on the land. “What is the name of this northern swamp?” I ask. But the figure answers nothing at all. I take it that he, too, is one of its aboriginal inhabitants. What a ceaseless propagation has gone on here--when did it begin, when will it end? Life is to give life. “And you, you dumb being, are you happier without words and gibberish? With you there is no vice, for you mate as naturally as the wild ducks yonder. You have no slander or back-biting, then. No boring conversations about social nothings. No nasty words or thoughts! Your mind is as pure as the roebuck’s on the water’s edge.” But the figure answers nothing at all, deftly paddling on and on, until I hear the roar of rapids ahead. It must be the outlet of the swamp. The waters grow disturbed, rocks peer through the surface, foam eddies round them. I can see the rush of the current by the leaves and twigs hurrying by. We are shooting the rapids. The figure backs water, the foam rushing up his bare arms. But he can not stop us, the canoe will strike that rock ahead instantly! He jumped and disappeared with his paddle. The next I know I am thrown forward--