A PAIR OP' SPLENDID WHITE PELICANS 
CHAPTER III 
IN THE CAPE SABLE WILDERNESS 
Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters^ 
Which, like a network of steel, exte>ided in every direction. 
Over their heads the tozaering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress 
Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in mid-air 
Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals. 
Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken, save by the herons. 
Longfellow, “ Evangeline.” 
I T was a cool, sparkling morning, with a bracing north¬ 
erly wind, the twenty-sixth of April, when we shoved the 
tender over the slipperv “ soap-flat,” and, in boots loaded 
with the tenacious white clay mud, stood upon the southern¬ 
most tip of the mainland of the United States. An almost 
unbroken, unsurveyed wilderness lay before us, with all its 
interesting possibilities. A handful of settlers had taken up 
claims of government land along the shore, cleared a few 
