142 LOON SHOOTING. 



boulders and broken rocks. We passed through these, in 

 which were several loons, or great northern divers, quietly 

 floating, and as they watched us, sending forth their clear 

 and clarion voices over the water. We took each a pass- 

 ing shot at them, but with no other effect than to make 

 them dive quicker and deeper, and stay under longer than 

 usual ; at the flash of our rifles they would go down, and in 

 a few minutes would be again on the surface sixty rods from 

 us, laughing aloud, as it were, with their clear and quavering 

 voices, at our impotent attempts to shoot them. 



We left the " second chain of ponds " by the narrow and 

 sluggish inlets, still the Bog River, here so small that the 

 boatman's oars spanned the narrow channel, and as crooked 

 a stream as it is possible for one to be. It flows for miles 

 through a low and marshy region, with dense alderbushes 

 clustering along the shore, and scattering fir-trees, dead at 

 the top, standing between these and the forests in the back- 

 ground. The bottom, much of the way, is of clean yellow 

 sand, in which are imbedded millions of clams, resembling, 

 in every respect, those of the ocean beach. Some of these 

 we opened, and found the living bivalves in appearance 

 precisely like their kindred of the salt water. I have seen 

 occasionally muscle shells in other streams, and along the 

 shores of the lakes, but I never before saw any such as these 

 save near the ocean, where the salt water ebbs and flows, 

 and not even there in such quantities. One might gather 

 barrels and barrels of them, large and apparently fat, and 

 yet there would be hundreds or thousands of barrels left. 



