NARRATIVE. 49 



as we went, is continuously covered with forest. The trees continued 

 the same, except that the white pines and maples had disappeared. 

 The number of species is small ; black and white spruce, balsam fir, 

 canoe birch and aspen, with arbor vitas in the moist places, and here 

 and there a few larches and red pines, with an occasional yellow 

 birch ; the spruces prevailing on the high land, and the birch and 

 aspen near the water, yet everywhere a certain proportion of each. 

 From the great similarity of the evergreens on the one hand, and the 

 white-stemmed aspens and birches on the other, at the distance of a 

 couple of hundred yards the forest seemed to be composed of only 

 two kinds of trees. The trees are not large, usually not exceeding 

 thirty or forty feet in height. Yet the whole effect is rich and 

 picturesque. Here, as in all the features of the lake, the im- 

 pression is a grand uniformity, never monotonous, but expressive of 

 its unique character. 



The resemblance to the sea-shore often recurred to my mind. Ac- 

 cording to Dr. Leconte, several insects found here are identical 

 with species belonging to the sea-shore, and others corresponding or 

 similar. The beach-pea, Lathyrus maritimits, and Polygonum 

 maritimum, both of them sea-shore plants, are abundant in this 

 neighborhood ; the former, indeed, throughout the north shore of the 

 lake. 



Although so cold this morning, yet by noon the heat was intense. 

 The weather, indeed, during the whole time we were on the lake, 

 was such as we sometimes have in Massachusetts in September ; 

 cool morning and night, and warm in the middle of the day. The 

 sun has great power, and blisters the hands and face unless well 

 guarded, but the air is cooled by the vast expanse of water, 

 (which contains ice during the largest part of the year, and even 

 on the surface is rarely above 40 Fah. at any season,) so that it 

 was never warm in the shade, or when the sun was below the hori- 

 zon. We in our canoe being induced to land by a white pebble 

 beach which at a very short distance had the appearance of sand, 

 and thus promised an entomological harvest, indemnified ourselves 

 by a bath in the icy, crystal water. Here was another resemblance 

 to the sea ; we could dive from the rocks into thirty feet of water, 

 which, moreover, was of about the ordinary temperature of the 



