Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/506

Rh at the "ech," and it seems to wait impatiently for the "o." We had a long conversation with it, and wondered whether it resided in the dense canebrake and higher foliage that lined the water front, or rebounded upward like a boy's ball that had fallen on the vast concavity of the tree tops.

Abeham said he had never heard of the echo before, and he listened with all his ears, laughing consumedly when the echo shouted defiance; but he would not try it, from shyness as we thought.

We spent the days exploring lake and swamp, returning to camp tired at night, but repaid by our experience. We were seeing the lake and swamp as no one can ever see them without such boats as ours. A heavy boat, with oars, cannot pass through the ditches and canals, nor even coast the lake inside the line of stumps. The negro "dugout" is available for lake and canal, but it is heavy and slow, and it cannot face the lake in rough water and high wind. The birch-bark canoe would get snagged at every length. The only safe and pleasant boat for the swamp is the cedar canoe, and an open one is better than a decked one, to let the moccasins wriggle out if they happen to fall in while you are passing through the narrow canals.

During our passage round the lake we came to