animals that had been reared together, and who possessed the rare
instinct of returning always to the shanty from which they started,
however far the chase may have led them. It was a glorious sound in
the old forests, the music of those two hounds, as their voices rang
out bold and free, like a bugle, and went, ringing through the forest,
echoing among the mountains and dying away over the lakes. But of that
hereafter.

Our little fleet swung out upon the water, while the sun was yet
hanging like a great torch among the tops of the trees, on the eastern
hills. It was a beautiful morning, so fresh, so genial, so balmy. A
pleasant breeze came sweeping lazily over the lake, and went sighing
and moaning among the old forest trees. All around us were glad
voices. The partridge drummed upon his log; the squirrels chattered as
they chased each other up and down the great trunks of the trees; the
loon lifted up his clarion voice away out upon the water; the eagle
and the osprey screamed as they hovered high above us in the air,
while a thousand merry voices came from out the old woods, all
mingling in the harmony of nature's gladness. A loud and repeated
hurrah! burst from us all as our oars struck the water, and sent our
little boats bounding over the rippled surface of the beautiful
Saranac.

This is a indeed a beautiful sheet of water. The shores were lined
with a dense and unbroken forest, stretching back to the mountains
which surround it. The old wood stood then in all its primeval
grandeur, just as it grew. The axe had not harmed it, nor had fire
marred its beauty. The islands were covered with a lofty growth of
living timber clothed in the deepest green. There were not then, as
now, upon some of them, great dead trees reaching out their long bare