THE DEPARTURE. 3V 



among the old forest trees. All around us were glad voices. 

 The partridge drummed upon his log ; the squirrels chat- 

 tered as they chased each other up and down the great 

 trunks of the trees; the loon lifted up his clarion voice away 

 out upon the water ; the eagle and the osprey screamed as 

 they hovered high above us in the air, while a thousand 

 merry voices came from out the old woods, all mingling in 

 the harmony of nature's gladness. A loud and repeated 

 hurrah I burst from us all as our oars struck the water, and 

 sent our little boats bounding over the rippled surface of 

 the beautiful Saranac. 



This is a indeed a beautiful sheet of water. The shores 

 were lined with a dense and unbroken forest, stretching back 

 to the mountains which surround it. The old wood stood 

 then in all its primeval grandeur, just as it grew. The axe 

 had not harmed it, nor had fire marred its beauty. The 

 islands were covered with a lofty growth of living timber 

 clothed in the deepest green. There were not then, as now, 

 upon some of them, great dead trees reaching out their long 

 bare arms in verdureless desolation above a stinted under- 

 growth, and piled up trunks charred and blackened by the 

 fire that had revelled among them, but all were green, and 

 thrifty, and glorious in their robes of beauty. Thousands 

 of happy songsters carolled gaily among their branches, or 

 hid themselves in the dense foliage of their wide-spread- 

 ing arms. The islands are a marked feature of these north- 

 ern lakes, lending a peculiar charm to their quiet beauty, 

 and one day, when the iron horse shall go thundering 



