me with such solemnity as the landscape on that canal in the twilight of
an August afternoon. Nor was it merely a personal impression. There were
two hundred souls on board, with the usual proportion of giddy young girls
and talkative youths; the negro waiters as we entered the canal were
singing and playing their violins; but in an instant, as the speed of the
steamer was again checked to four miles an hour, every sound was hushed on
board. During the hour that was occupied in going through the canal, it is
a literal fact that not a sound was heard on the great steamer but the low
impressive orders of the captain and--if you chanced to be on the
captain's bridge--_the ticking of the clock in the wheel-house._ People
spoke in whispers, if they spoke at all, quite unconscious of it till they
remembered it afterward. What made it so impressive? I am sure I do not
know. Certainly there was nothing awful in the scenery, and we never were
in less danger in our lives. We were moving peacefully through a long,
narrow sheet of perfectly calm water, stretching straight as a die from
the river to the upper lake. If anything had happened, we could have
jumped ashore on either side, and another steamer from Buffalo would have
come through in a day or two and picked us up. The only thing possible to
fear was that we might ground in the shallow water, an emergency from
which we could only be relieved, as there are no tides in the lakes, by
the tedious process of lightening the cargo. It was a perfectly clear
evening after a most beautiful day. But on either side of us, far as the
eye could reach, stretched an apparently unbroken forest. Through the
narrow vista cleared for our silvery pathway a slow and stately twilight
came solemnly to fold us in its embrace, as we advanced solemnly and
slowly from vast and awful solitudes to solitudes more vast and awful
still. As we drew near the lake again, a little light-house gleamed, and,
as we swept past it out into the broad expanse of limitless waters, the
cheerful throb of the machinery quickened again upon the sea, the pleasant
swish of the water against the ship greeted us once more, life, movement,