Then I drank from the clear pool, and after washing my hands and face
continued my flight. Above the source of the brook I encountered
a rugged climb to the summit of a long ridge. Beyond was a steep
declivity to the shore of a placid, inland sea, upon the quiet
surface of which lay several beautiful islands.

The view was charming in the extreme, and as no man or beast was
to be seen that might threaten my new-found liberty, I slid over
the edge of the bluff, and half sliding, half falling, dropped into
the delightful valley, the very aspect of which seemed to offer a
haven of peace and security.

The gently sloping beach along which I walked was thickly strewn
with strangely shaped, colored shells; some empty, others still
housing as varied a multitude of mollusks as ever might have drawn
out their sluggish lives along the silent shores of the antediluvian
seas of the outer crust. As I walked I could not but compare myself
with the first man of that other world, so complete the solitude
which surrounded me, so primal and untouched the virgin wonders
and beauties of adolescent nature. I felt myself a second Adam
wending my lonely way through the childhood of a world, searching
for my Eve, and at the thought there rose before my mind's eye the
exquisite outlines of a perfect face surmounted by a loose pile of
wondrous, raven hair.

As I walked, my eyes were bent upon the beach so that it was not
until I had come quite upon it that I discovered that which shattered
all my beautiful dream of solitude and safety and peace and primal
overlordship. The thing was a hollowed log drawn upon the sands,
and in the bottom of it lay a crude paddle.