58 LAKE SUPERIOR. 



was up before us ; and when we started, we foresaw that we 

 should have head wind to contend with to-day. 



At sunrise, the bay north of Cape Choyye presented a noble land- 

 scape. On all sides but one, an unbroken extent of rounded hills, 

 so evenly wooded, that as the sun touched the curves at the top, it 

 looked like a bank of grass. At one spot, far in the bottom of the 

 bay, a white streak down the hill, and a faint roar at intervals, beto- 

 kened the cascade of a stream that enters here. 



The cove where we breakfasted, narrow and rocky at its mouth, 

 and expanding inside, had something so liveable and civilized 

 about it, that one might almost look for a cottage or two on some of 

 the beautiful points of abrupt birch-clad rock. 



On the rocks here, we found the purple flower of the wild onion, 

 and the pretty Potentilla fruticosa : also brilliant lilies, reminding 

 one of home. I was quite puzzled at finding our common red 

 cedar, (Juniperus Virginianus^) which we had not seen hitherto, 

 creeping on the rocks ; not forming a tuft like the creeping savin, 

 but a wide-meshed net-work of long straight shoots. * 



The shore on the northern side of the bay becomes yet bolder 

 and higher, attaining, according to Bayneld's chart, the height of 

 700 feet. Between Cape Choyye and Michipicotin, a distance of 

 about twenty miles, I did not notice but one beach, and that of 

 only a few yards' extent. The rocks rise from the water, often ver- 

 tically, several hundred feet, scored with deep rents and chasms, 

 from decomposed trap-dykes, and striped down with black lichens. 

 In some places, huge basalt-like parallelograms of rock stood out like 

 pulpits. Along the top of the ridge, stretched the never-ending 

 spruce forest, and wherever a gully or break varied the perpendic- 

 ular face, a few birches crept downward from crevice to crevice. 



On turning the point of Michipicotin harbor, we encountered the 

 full force of the wind, now fresh from the west ; and what was worse 

 for us, something of a sea. Our course was such as to bring the 

 wind abeam, and afford little shelter from the shore. We edged 

 along from point to point, so close to the rocks that often the oars 

 almost touched, and we were hardly lifted on the crest of a wave, 

 before it broke against the cliff, and rushed up into the chasms at 

 its foot. This was much closer proximity to a lee-shore than one 



