A flock of wild ducks swam near the edge and he saw two darting loons, but there was no other presence.

Silence, beauty and majesty were everywhere, and he was content to go on, without speaking, infused with the spirit of the wilderness.
The cove showed after a while, at first a mere slit that only a wary eye could have seen, and then a narrow opening through which a small creek flowed into the lake.

Willet, with swift and skillful strokes of the paddle, turned the canoe into the stream and advanced some distance up it, until he stopped at a point where it broadened into an expanse like a pool, covered partly with water lilies, and fringed with tall reeds.
Behind the reeds were slanting banks clothed with dense, green foliage.
It was an ideal covert, and there were thousands like it in the wonderful wilderness of the North Woods.
"You find this a good place, don't you, Tayoga ?" said Willet, with a certain deference.
"It suits us well," replied the young Onondaga in his measured tones.
"No man, Indian or white, has been here today.

The lilies are undisturbed.

Not a reed has been bent.