346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



AMONG THE "THOUSAND ISLANDS." 



Br GKANT ALLEN. 



" rjlHE humming-bird has now laid its eggs in the nest by the 



-L veranda," our friend wrote us from Gananoque ; " come soon 

 if you want to see them. And Miss Sinclair has tamed a chipmunk, 

 which eats almost from her hand, by the big tree. I'm sure your boy 

 would like to have a peep at him. Also, the Indian pipe plant is be- 

 ginning to flower in the wood behind the house. It doesn't last long ; 

 you must make haste, or you will be too late for it." 



We knew the hospitable chalet at Gananoque of old ; and even if 

 our friend's society had not been enough of itself to entice us (which 

 it amply was), the added delights of a humming-bird's nest, a tame 

 chipmunk, and the Indian-pipe plant in full flower might surely have 

 sufficed to move the heart of the stoniest of parents. I don't go in, 

 myself, for being what you may call stony ; on the contrary, where 

 the junior branches are concerned, I acknowledge myself but as clay 

 in the hands of the potter ; so the very next day saw us safely packed 

 on board the Princess Louise river-steamer, three precious souls, 

 and all agog to dash through thick and thin on the heaving bosom of 

 the broad St. Lawrence. 



And the broad St. Lawrence did heave that July evening, no mis- 

 take about it. A fresh west wind was blowing over the lake, and the 

 spray was dashing up with sea-like violence as we steamed away from 

 the wooden wharves of Kingston, heading down-stream for the Thou- 

 sand Islands. Lake Ontario, when it chooses, can get up a very decent 

 storm indeed ; quite as fine a storm as any to be seen upon the German 

 Ocean, with huge four-masters from Chicago stranding helplessly on 

 the reefs and spits ; and even the river can run seas-high in its broader 

 reaches among the wide expansion known as the Lake of the Thousand 

 Islands. Now, Gananoque is the petty metropolis of the Thousand 

 Island district on the Canadian side, as Alexandria Bay and Clayton 

 are on the American shore ; and the Princess Louise is the little 

 steamer which plies daily between Kingston and Gananoque during 

 the summer season, when the ice is up and navigation is open. But I 

 have always found European ideas as to the geography of Canada so 

 very vague that I shall make no apology for beginning my story with 

 some slight account of the Thousand Islands and their immediate sur- 

 roundings. 



Just at the point where the huge St. Lawrence emerges lazily from 

 Lake Ontario or where Lake Ontario narrows into the St. Lawrence, 

 whichever you will the bed of the river crosses a transverse range 

 of low granite hills, whose bare summits have been ground into dome- 

 shaped bosses (or roches moutonnees, as they say in Switzerland) by 



