54 LAKE SUPERIOR. 



sailing so unsteady a boat as a canoe ; although to 

 ordinary mortals it is difficult to stand up in one, 

 they manage to sail them in heavy winds and over 

 a rough sea. This art appears to be peculiar to 

 them, for I have never known it attempted by the 

 Canadian voyageurs, nor even by the half-breeds. 



The fogs rising from the cold waters of Lake Su- 

 perior are frequent and dense ; on this occasion the 

 moisture settled upon the bushes, fell from the 

 leaves in large drops, and dampened the boughs of 

 which our bed was to be composed. For this latter 

 purpose, as there was no sapin on the island, we 

 were compelled to use oak sprouts, a substitute 

 that Don at first, attracted by its beauty and appa- 

 rent comfort, approved, but which, when before 

 morning the leaves were pressed flat and the stems 

 made unpleasantly prominent, he anathematized 

 vigorously. 



After supper we wandered along the shore, pick- 

 ing up the queerly shaped and oddly colored stones 

 that abound on the Canadian side of the lake. No 

 agates nor amethysts, and none of the really beauti- 

 ful pebbles, are to be obtained south of Michipicot- 

 ten, but everywhere are curious specimens to be 

 found. Carried, as it is supposed, by the ice-drift 

 of former ages from their natural beds, crushed by 

 the moving mass, and rounded by the beating waves, 

 the hardest only survive, while the strangest and 

 most incongruous varieties are collected together. 

 Meeting with novel specimens at every step, we 

 were continually rejecting what we had just selected, 



