During the afternoon there was more wind, and the lake grew
rougher. It was fine to see the way the men managed the canoes.
Sometimes we seemed almost to lose ourselves in the trough of the
big waves, but there was not a dipper of water taken in. There was
a head wind and hard paddling for a time, but towards evening it
grew calmer, and the lake became very beautiful. In the distance
we saw several large masses of floating ice, and lying far away in
the west were many islands. The sky above was almost covered with
big, soft, silver clouds and as the sun sank gradually towards the
horizon the lake was like a great field of light. Once we stopped
to listen to the loons calling [Great Northern Divers]. They were
somewhere out on the glittering water, and far apart. We could not
see them, but there were four, and one wild call answering another
rang out into the great silence. It was weird and beautiful beyond
words; the big, shining lake with its distant blue islands; the sky
with its wonderful clouds and colour; two little canoes so deep in
the wilderness, and those wild, reverberant voices coming up from
invisible beings away in the "long light" which lay across the
water.
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