TROUT FISHING IN MAINE. 261 



from Mr. Frost's protecting influence, you may, on 

 awakening, find your molars gone, or your strength, 

 if it consists in the length of your purse. To be 

 forewarned is to be forearmed, and now if you fall into 

 the snare, blame not the writer. 



The voyage by water, distance fourteen or fifteen 

 miles, is charming ; after leaving the place of em- 

 barkation you proceed about two miles down the 

 Cambridge, which is here dead and sluggish,* till you 

 reach the entrance to Lake Umbagog, when your 

 vessel's prow is pointed for distant hills fringed with 

 giant timber. On either side, islands after islands dot 

 the bosom of the water, while verdant mountains and 

 primeval forests stretch far, far beyond the limits 

 allotted to vision. The two or three hours which are 

 taken to cross the lake will flit by rapidly, if you have 

 appreciation of what is sublime, of what Nature in her 

 grand conceptions formed, and the impressions in- 

 dented on the tablets of your memory will doubtlessly 

 be permanent. It matters not how sceptical and un- 

 believing some may be, place them where the giant 

 works of the Creator are visible, and how insignificant 

 for ever after must they view the puny efforts and con- 

 structions of their fellow-beings, and cease to disbelieve 

 that there is One above omnipotent and all-powerful ! 



Fail not, on reaching the centre of the lake, to face 

 * Once a favourite haunt for moose. 



