"" WE WOULD PADDLE ON UNTIL WE FOUND THE RIGHT SPOT and candle lantern, and crashed through the dark woods to a great rock rising fifty feet sheer from the lake. Here we spread our bed, and, with the music of the wind in the pine-tree tops in our ears, the moonlight full on our faces, passed a perfect night of sleep and waking. We did not move camp every day, but sometimes lingered lazily about, doing the family wash on the rocks, trying cooking experiments, taking a few needed stitches, fishing, exploring, or even reading. We had but one volume with us helped with the embarkation. The last act before leaving an old camp-site was to make sure that the fire was thoroughly out and could not run. For some reason we all clamored for the honor of doing this; but no matter how many buckets of water the rest of us used, the "chief" always put on one more and gravely stepped on the dead embers. At the portages it was a case of every one work his hardest. It took several trips to transfer all our duffle and the two canoes from one end of the portage to WE OCCUPIED OURSELVES WITH UNPACKING THE COOKING KIT the other, and we girls found that we could be of most assistance by making one trip across, carrying the miscellaneous stuff-fishing-rods and net, cameras, axes, cooking kit, and one dufflebag containing the food for the lunch. As soon as we reached the other end we would go about the business of getting lunch, so that when the tired men finished their labors they might at once refresh themselves. After a short rest we would again embark, and paddle on until we found the right spot. With all speed we would make camp, tired, happy, and at peace. And this is all there is to campingsome play, some work, rest well won and therefore sweet, and a boundless joy that you are freely living in "God's outof-doors." T HIS is something quite different from hunting for photographs, even though a man's weapons in both cases be camera and plates. To get pictures one must look for them with a different eye than for mere records of travel. One who is willing to take snap-shots liberally will occasionally find himself in possession of a picture, but they come rarely. One may say, using a colloquial definition, that, to constitute a picture, composition and lighting must be such as to make one's friends and perhaps his critics exclaim, "That is a picture!" Such a verdict is the industrious snap-shotter's reward for the many negatives thrown on the ash-heap. But the picture has generally to be carefully sought for. In this search most amateurs think that if they can only get far enough away from home it will be easy to capture the elusive sprite that lures them on. If they could take a vacation trip up the Saguenay, they say, or in the Yellowstone Park, or go to the Sandwich Islands, like the fortunate fellows, they would come back with boxes and roll-holders full of artistic stuff. But they should remember that the other fellows are saying, "If we could only get to New York, or Boston, or Putney, Vermont, there we could find something worth taking." And that is just where of unnecessary detail. Instead of trying to get a multiplicity of figures or of objects on a plate, unity and concentration are sought. This counts in favor of the man who cannot go to the ends of the earth on his camera hunting expedition. In making genre pictures, say of a family of negroes around their cabin, or a group of market women gossiping or of children at play, a cardinal principle, often neglected, is to have them interested in themselves and not in the picture-taker. They must not look at the |