250 Musing's by Camp- Fire and Wayside 



canoes, which some city crank had invented, brand- 

 new, on the beach, with dudes dressed in the 

 fashionable dude outing suits — getting into the can- 

 vas boats and pawing on both sides — just as a city 

 canoeist does, you know. But as we drifted slowly 

 up to the dock a different type appeared. There 

 were men walking about, grizzled old veterans so 

 full of learning that it exuded from their pores, and 

 gave the atmosphere — or would if it had not been 

 for the terrible offal of that monster cannery — the 

 odor of a college class-room. And there stood that 

 idol of every lover of nature and of charming litera- 

 ture, John Burroughs. 



Naturally we felt abashed; we with our old tub 

 of a mail-boat in the presence of that sumptuous 

 ship, the John W. Ellis, and in the presence of the 

 pick and choice of the science and scholarship of 

 the United States — for it was the famous scientific 

 expedition that we had so suddenly run upon in the 

 hid-away cave of Orca. They ran out a great 

 gramophone with a wide and glistening silver trum- 

 pet, and began to grind out stories, some of them 

 chestnuts, and songs, and comic dialogues. We 

 took our places appropriately with the other Aleuts 

 and applauded. 



The Ellis had broken her propeller — how, I did 

 not inquire — and had backed up against the beach, 

 so that low tide would clear it, and they could get 

 at it to make repairs. 



Orca is beached against such a cliff as I have 



