Viewing page 78 of 102

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

                                           68.
With Mr. Woods we passed by the swamp near which we had spent the first night out from Placid and in which we had seen the Veratrum viride. We did not wish to bother Mr. Woods to stop that we might pick specimens of it and so reconciled ourselves to its loss, not having seen any specimens of it on our way up.
   We reached the Saranac Inn station in the pouring rain. Indeed this day will chiefly be remembered because of the incessant rain. The two miles' walk to the Inn so thoroly drenched us that thereafter we were absolutely impervious to the rain and plodded right along as though in bright sunlight.
   At the Inn we stopped long enough to purchase provisions and get our mail. The canoe with the maps and paddles we found just as we had left them, fully justifying the confidence which we had in the honesty on the inhabitants of Saranac.
   We reached our former pleasant camping place near the foot of Saranac about four o'clock. The rain, which had been pouring in torrents and made us and everytning that we had soaking wet, instead of depressing us, had made us reckless and determined to keep on going until weariness would let us go no further. We therefore carried over to Hiawatha Lodge, went through the Spectacle Lakes, and paddled down Stony Creek. We reached the red bridge near the mouth of the creek about 5:30.
   Feeling that we were now wet enough to satisfy ourselves and that the narrow strip of sand under the bridge was as good a place as possible to camp for the night, we strung up our tent on the girders and lay in the sand.
   How wet everything was! The thoroly saturated tent was no longer