Lake Superior 105 



the principal one an admirably fitted up boarding 

 house, giving accommodation to a number of the 

 miners. The majority of them, however, live on 

 shore, and are brought off by day and by night in 

 " shifts." An American lady, who went off in a 

 boat the other day in order to romanticise in the 

 moonlight, was extremely astonished and shocked 

 at being suddenly greeted with the jubilant shout of, 

 " Here comes the night-shift ! " 



* On the mainland a low range of cliffs, crowned 

 by pine-trees, is separated from the bright green 

 waters of the lake by a narrow strip of land, in some 

 places broad enough to permit of the location on it 

 of pretty wooden houses, and even of a church, in 

 which services are given indiscriminately to all kinds 

 of the faithful ; in others, so narrow as hardly to 

 permit of the passage of the road which leads to the 

 charming white wooden villa of the Managing 

 Doctor, which contains everything to make life a 

 pleasure. A more lovely situation for a house it 

 would be hard to find. Indeed, Nature seems 

 originally to have intended it for that purpose, for 

 she has run up trap-dykes so conveniently as almost 

 to do away with the necessity of walls, while in front 

 lies Lake Superior, with Isle Royale, Pie Island, and 

 innumerable others shining purple and green and 

 gold in the soft, warm northern sunlight, and breaking 

 the straight line of the water with every form of 

 graceful curve and rugged ridge. The forest begins 

 immediately at the edge of the clearing. In part, 



