The place is more open than is usual, comparatively level, and a dozen feet above the river, which, brawling over a ledge, spreads into an attractive pool. The place also faces the west, where there is promise of a fine sunset; a number of large birches are in sight, and an abundance of balsam. "And," you remark, stooping to untie the tent-bag, "there are not many flies." Instantly a mosquito sings in your ear, and as you still his song you recall a recent statement by the scientist Klein, that an insect's wings flap four hundred times in a second. The mind does not readily grasp so rapid a motion, but you accept the figures on trust, as you accept the distances of interstellar spaces. Very soon you discover that you were in error about the fewness of the flies. They are all there--mosquitoes, black-flies, deer-flies, and punkies, besides other species strictly vegetarian. So you drop the tent-bag and build a smudge. Experience has taught you to make a small but hot fire, and when this is well under way you kick open a rotted, moss-grown cedar and scoop up handfuls of damp mould. This, piled on and banked around the fire, provides a smudge that is continuous and effective. We built smudges morning, noon, and night. Whenever a halt was called, if only for five minutes, I reached mechanically for a strip of birchbark and a handful of twigs. At one camping place the ring of smudges suggested the magic fire circle in "Die Walküre." Brunhilde lay in her tent, in a reek of smoke, while Wotan, in no humor for song, heaped vegetable tinder upon the defending fires. More than once the darkening forest and the steel-gray sky of a Canadian twilight have set me humming the motives of "The Ring," and I shall always remember a pretty picture in an earlier cruise. "Jess" was a stable boy who drove our team to the point where roads ceased, and during a halt in the expedition this exuberant youth reclined upon a log, and with a pipe fashioned from a reed sought to imitate responsively the song of the white-throated sparrow. He looked for all the world like Siegfried in his forest. "Smudge." It is not a poetic word--mere mention of it would distress Mr. Yeats; but it is potent as "Sesame" to unlock the treasures of memory. And before the laggard Spring comes round again many of us will sigh for a whiff of yellow, acrid smoke, curling from a smoldering fire in the heart of the enchanted wood. IV.--"BOGWAH."