In the forests, with a thousand untrod trails to choose, they would be safe.

He had only one reason for keeping to the river until they passed through the Death Chute.

It would carry them beyond a great swampy region to the westward through which it would be impossible for them to make their way at this season of the year.

Otherwise he would have gone ashore now.

He loved the river, had faith in it, but he knew that not until the deep forests swallowed them, as a vast ocean swallows a ship, would they be beyond the peril that threatened them from the Landing.
Three or four times between sunrise and noon they saw life ashore and on the stream; once a scow tied to a tree, then an Indian camp, and twice trappers' shacks built in the edge of little clearings.