Swimming in ice water is never found comfortable, and we hurried to a close at hand, deserted logging camp, where, fortunately, we found a large heating stove set up and ready for use, and near by a fine pile of dry wood for the stove, which had been left over from the recent winter's operations of logging. In a few minutes, a rousing fire was made, and, after removing his garments and wringing them as dry as possible, we hung them on lines about the stove and quickly dried them and made them ready for use. This was necessary, as no change of clothing had been provided for this intended short excursion into the woods. By the time our work was finished, the snow had mostly melted away. The ice was all out of the rivers, and we found ourselves one morning on the banks of the Tomahawk River, wondering how we were to cross it, if possible, without the delay of constructing a raft sufficiently large to carry us. The tote-road leading to Merrill, which we wished to follow, was on the opposite side of the Tomahawk from where we approached it. We finally discovered an old birch canoe hidden in the brush. It was leaky and in very bad repair, so we set ourselves to work gathering pitch from the ends of a pile of freshly cut pine logs lying on the bank of the river, banked there to be pushed into the stream by the log drivers. This we put into a dish with a little grease and boiled until it was of the right consistency to stick to the bark of the canoe. Patches of cloth were laid over the riven places in the bark, and pitched until the boat was made waterproof--for temporary use at least. With our small belongings, we got into the canoe and started down the Tomahawk, intending to stay in it as long as it would hold together and take us on our journey, saving us that much walking. Unfortunately, however, for us, we soon came to a long strip of rapids with which we were not familiar. Selecting what we believed to be the best water, we permitted the frail craft to float into the rapids, and our fast journey down stream had begun almost before we realized the fact. All went well until nearly to the lower end of the rapids, when the old canoe struck a sharp rock slightly hidden under the water, and split in two. Partly by swimming and partly by wading, we reached the coveted shore, wetter and wiser than when an hour before we had taken an old canoe that was not our own, in which to cross the stream, instead of spending considerably more time to construct a raft on which we could safely and with dry clothes, have reached the opposite shore. The usual woodsman's process of drying clothes was again gone through with, since it was too cold, at that season of the year, to travel all day in our wet garments.