350 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tent hands. Practice makes perfect, however ; and a few weeks in 

 Canada soon brought back to me the old knack of rowing with thole- 

 pins instead of rowlocks, though to the last the instinctive tendency 

 to drop the wrist in the vain effort to feather feathering, of course, 

 is impossible with the pins persisted always, much to my discomfiture. 



The chalet, whither we were bound, stands a little removed from 

 Gananoque village, in wild grounds all of its own, raised high among 

 the woods, on top of a sheer cliff, beneath whose frowning crags we 

 rowed into a little bay or haven, protected by a bold granite headland 

 from the sea, that rolled high upon the open river. There we pulled 

 up beside the floating wooden landing-stage, and disembarked on the 

 grounds of Mossbank. (The real name was not Mossbank, but some- 

 thing very much prettier and more appropriate, only my friend's sol- 

 emn adjurations have bound me down by inviolable promise not to 

 reveal either its local habitation or its name too openly to the profane 

 vulgar, or even, which is quite another matter, to the candid reader of 

 this present magazine.) I forget how many steps, partly wooden, and 

 partly cut into the solid granite of the headland, led up the face of 

 the perpendicular cliff from the water's edge to the chalet platform. 

 I was told at the time something like one hundred and ninety, I 

 fancy ; but the beautiful picture of that calm bay, and the hanging 

 woods, and the maiden-hair fern springing in wild luxuriance from the 

 clefts of the rock, and the bearberry clambering over the ice-worn 

 bosses, and the wild sarsaparilla raising its green berries on its tall, 

 bare stalk, and all the thousand and one exquisite details of frond and 

 foliage, and fruit and flower, distracted my attention from arithmetical 

 facts, gradational or otherwise, and left me only eyes and mind for the 

 beautiful scene that unrolled itself slowly, step by step, before me. 



At the summit, on a rounded, rocky plateau of bare granite, over- 

 grown in places by clambering shrubs and trailing Western creepers, 

 the chalet itself fronted the Sunset Islands, and looked down from its 

 aerial perch upon the intricate maze of russet land and purple water. 

 To the right lay the lighthouses and the islands in their neighborhood ; 

 in front, one islet behind another stood massed in view, backed up by 

 the low hills of the New York shore ; to the left, the high cliff closed in 

 the sight, with a single rocky island rising full in prospect, and the river 

 stretching inimitably onward, broken by endless tiny archipelagoes, 

 in the direction of the Cornwall Rapids. For the chalet itself, how 

 shall I fitly describe it ? A more charming summer-house was never 

 devised for human habitation. Being meant for midsummer use alone, 

 warmth and snugness were left wholly out of consideration ; all the 

 stress was laid upon coolness and breeziness in the sweltering heat of 

 Canadian August. Inside and out, the chalet was scrupulously of 

 wood, wooden ; it was built of the native white pine, polished both 

 sides, one thickness of boards only, and all the constructional details 

 within and without were plainly visible to the naked eye in a way that 



