there was no game fit to eat, and where the sky was always dark with
huge gnats and mosquitoes as big as pigeons.

We were great admirers of the little black water-bugs. Their whole
lives seemed to be play, skimming, swimming, swirling, and waltzing
together in little groups on the edge of the lake and in the meadow
springs, dancing to music we never could hear. The long-legged
skaters, too, seemed wonderful fellows, shuffling about on top of the
water, with air-bubbles like little bladders tangled under their hairy
feet; and we often wished that we also might be shod in the same way
to enable us to skate on the lake in summer as well as in icy winter.
Not less wonderful were the boatmen, swimming on their backs, pulling
themselves along with a pair of oar-like legs.

Great was the delight of brothers David and Daniel and myself when
father gave us a few pine boards for a boat, and it was a memorable
day when we got that boat built and launched into the lake. Never
shall I forget our first sail over the gradually deepening water, the
sunbeams pouring through it revealing the strange plants covering the
bottom, and the fishes coming about us, staring and wondering as if
the boat were a monstrous strange fish.

The water was so clear that it was almost invisible, and when we
floated slowly out over the plants and fishes, we seemed to be
miraculously sustained in the air while silently exploring a veritable
fairyland.

We always had to work hard, but if we worked still harder we were
occasionally allowed a little spell in the long summer evenings about
sundown to fish, and on Sundays an hour or two to sail quietly without