A VOYAGE TO BEARD'S ISLAND. 145 



ow, and my slumbers were presided over, not by 

 great horned owls, but by time-honored pictures 

 of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Louis Agassiz, and 

 Benjamin Peirce, and of Rome, Tivoli, Venice, 

 Florence, and fair Harvard. 



Sunday dawned cool, clear and windy. There 

 had been no frost. Nature had been true to 

 herself, as she generally is. From nine till six 

 we fought our way homewards against impetuous 

 winds. No sail could aid us, no current do more 

 than mitigate the force of the air. The battle 

 against the waves developed a marked difference 

 in our canoes. The moment we rounded a curve 

 into a stretch of wind-swept water my canoe 

 shot ahead of the other without extra effort on 

 my part. In still water, and especially towards 

 evening, when the wind died out, my friend was 

 the one who played with his paddle, and I the 

 one who toiled. At two o'clock we landed at 

 the foot of a bold ledge rising abruptly sixty or 

 seventy feet from the stream. We climbed part 

 way to the summit and lunched, surrounded by 

 columbine, violets, saxifrage and dozens of birds. 

 A pewee complained of us, and turning we saw 

 her nest on the face of the ledge, hidden under a 

 projecting shoulder of rock. It was just com- 

 pleted, and its delicate moss trimming made it 

 seem part of the lichen-grown ledge itself. From 

 the pines came the thin voice of a black-throated 



