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326 the boats and the stowing of dunnage. At about eleven o'clock in the forenoon we would reach Belvidere; and the Great Foul Rift was only a mile farther.

There was a camp of bass fishers near us, and they came to see us start. They learned our intention of going down without portage, rift or no rift. They did not dissuade us. One of them said he knew the Big Foul Rift, and he gave us precise, too precise, instructions. All I could recall half an hour later was: "Keep to the right when you come to the big white stone—if there's water enough to float your boats."

It was noon when we came to the town of Belvidere, and paddled into deep water under a mill. We needed some necessaries for our dinner, and we could buy them here. The school-boys flocked to the bank to see the canoes, and the mill-workers (it was the dinner hour) came down to have a chat.

"You are not going to run the rift?" asked one.

"Yes, we are."

"They can do it; they don't draw more than two inches," said another.

We knew that at least one of the canoes, heavily laden with baggage, and with a heavy man in her, drew more than six inches. We could get no