I foresaw, too, that I should burn, and bruise, and cut myself and that Eddie's liniments and lotions and New Skin would come in handy. It seemed to me that in those bags would be almost everything that human heart could need or human ills require, and when we went below where Del and Charlie, our appointed guides, were crowding certain other bags full of the bulkier stores--packages, cans and bottles, and when I gazed about on still other things--tents, boots, and baskets of camp furniture--I had a sense of being cared for, though I could not but wonder how two small canoes were going to float all that provender and plunder and four strong men. Chapter Five _Then away to the heart of the deep unknown,_ _Where the trout and the wild moose are--_ _Where the fire burns bright, and tent gleams white_ _Under the northern star._ Chapter Five It was possible to put our canoes into one of the lakes near the hotel and enter the wilderness by water--the Liverpool chain--but it was decided to load boats and baggage into wagons and drive through the woods--a distance of some seventeen uneven miles--striking at once for the true wilderness where the larger trout were said to dwell and the "over Sunday" fisherman does not penetrate. Then for a day or two we would follow waters and portages familiar to our guides, after which we would be on the borders of the unknown, prepared to conquer the wilderness with an assortment of fishing rods, a supply of mosquito ointment and a pair of twenty-two caliber rifles, these being our only guns. It seems hardly necessary to say that we expected to do little shooting. In the first place it was out of season for most things, though this did not matter so much, for Eddie had in some manner armed himself with a commission from the British Museum to procure specimens dead or alive, and this amounted to a permit to kill, and skin, and hence to eat, promiscuously and at will. But I believe as a party, we were averse to promiscuous killing; besides it is well to be rather nice in the matter of special permits. Also, we had come, in the main, for trout and exploration. It was agreed between us that, even if it were possible to hit anything with our guns, we would not kill without skinning, and we wouldn't skin without eating, after which resolution the forest things probably breathed easier, for it was a fairly safe handicap.