CHAPTER XXI. 



MUSCALONGE. 



Every person has, more or less, a conception of what 

 Fairyland must be like ; my ideas run into caves and 

 grottoes, with shady nooks and flower-clad rocks, ferns 

 luxuriously covering jagged peaks, and creepers fes- 

 tooning imaginary roofs ; one moment the eye resting 

 upon the evanescent oleander ; at another, gazing with 

 admiration upon the pure and spotless water-lily ; but 

 to leave the realms of fancy and return to reality is 

 but the work of an instant, the arousing of the sleeping 

 man to the realities of life. 



Fancy the season of the year autumn, the day cloud- 

 less, with the bluest and most transparent sky over- 

 head that mortal ever gazed upon, the water under- 

 neath your keel the most pellucid, rapid, and laughing 

 that eye ever rested on, hundreds of islands on every 

 side of the most fantastic shapes, trees and shrubs 

 crowding every available inch of soil, covered with the 

 most gorgeous colourings that ever were represented 

 by the arc of heaven, and a distance so soft and un- 

 definable, that the beholder wonders if he cannot see 

 into another planet. Such, in truth, is the St. Law- 

 rence amid the thousand islands on a fine day towards 

 the end of September. Where under the sun can such 

 a scene be looked upon ? I search my memory in 

 vain for its counterpart ; and although the inland seas 



