beautiful bays stealing around behind bold rocky promontories, and
sleeping in quiet beauty under the shadows of the tall forest trees
that tower above their shores. It is dotted, too, with beautiful
islands, some rising with a gentle slope from the water, covered with
scattering Norway pines, and a dense undergrowth of low bushes; others
are covered with tall spruce, fir, and hemlocks, standing up in
stately and solemn grandeur, their arms lovingly intertwined, through
the everlasting verdure of which the sun never shines; and others
still are gigantic rocks, rising up out of the deep water, all
treeless and shrubless, remaining always in brown and barren
desolation, on which the eagle and osprey devour their prey, and the
flocks of gulls that frequent the lake 'light to rest from their
almost ceaseless flight. Civilization has not as yet marred in
anything this beautiful sheet of water; even the lumberman has not
forced his way to the majestic old pines that tower in stately
grandeur above the forest trees of a lesser growth; not a foot of laud
has been cleared within thirty miles of it. The old woods stand around
it just as God placed them, in all their pristine solemnity, stately
and motionless; the wild things that roamed among them in the day of
old, are there still, and the same species of birds that sported in
their branches thousands of years ago, are there still. We heard the
howl of the wolf at night; we heard the scream of the panther; we saw
the tracks of the moose, and where he had fed on the pastures along
the shore; we saw the footprints of a huge bear in the sand on the
beach, and the deer-paths were like those that lead to a sheep-fold.
It was a pleasant thing to row along the shore, into the bays, around
the islands, and into the creeks that came in from other little lakes
deeper in the wilderness. The banks are mostly bold and bluff, the
rocks standing up four or eight feet from the water, or broken and
fallen like an ancient wall. Here and there is a long stretch of