We pressed onward from dawn to dark, in rain that drenched us, hail that hammered our bowed heads, snow-flurries that left our faces hot and smarting: in blinding sun, and in wind that cracked our lips.

The seven red men toiled incessantly, like animals driven by an unresting instinct; dragging their long canoe from the water to crawl with it over weary miles of trails: embarking on inland oceans whose further shores were below the horizon.

My mind was staggered at the vastness of the country we traversed, and at the numbers of people who had pushed so far west into what I had always thought an empty wilderness. It was no more a wilderness than our Province of Maine. Daily, almost, we sighted the cabins of settlers, or trading stations; and the route we followed, Verrieul said, was yearly traversed by hundreds of traders, to say nothing of Indians, who moved constantly along these waterways during warm weather, going to trade or visit friendly nations, or merely traveling for pleasure.

When we passed canoes or skirted trading posts, we lay flat in the canoe, at Sponge-belly’s orders, so that we became almost hopeless in our realization that our captors were determined to keep our whereabouts a secret. I’m bound to say these Indians were kind to us from the first, but my feelings won’t be hurt if I never again see an Indian, or smell one.

We met travelers aplenty; voyageurs, carrying supplies; hunters and trappers, hard-faced men who never took their eyes from our Indians; but we were warned not to speak to them under pain of death.

Verrieul urged Doc to make wise-sounding speeches to the Indians now and then, so that our lot might be improved. At first Doc said helplessly that wise speeches were beyond his powers, since he knew none, though he could say a great deal about how we had nothing to cover us at night, whereas our seven captors had a bearskin apiece, and how it would be a wonder, now that the nights were getting colder, if all of us didn’t die of pneumonia before we got wherever we were going.

“You’ll find it easy,” Verrieul insisted, “if you remember that Indians are less impressed by the things we consider valuable, than by what seems commonplace to us. Money, to their way of thinking, is nothing by comparison with a long memory. Fine clothes, or a high position in society, are of no importance in the sight of an Indian; whereas one who has unusual knowledge, or has traveled to far countries, is a person of distinction, worthy of respect and consideration.”