" A PAIR OF SPLENDID WHITE PELICANS " 



CHAPTER III 



IN THE CAPE SABLE WILDERNESS 



Soon were lost in a maze 0f sluggish and devious waters, 

 Which, like a network of steel, extended in every direction. 

 Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress 



Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in mid-air 



Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals. 



Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken, save by the herons. 



LONGFELLOW, " Evangeline." 



IT was a cool, sparkling morning, with a bracing north- 

 erly wind, the twenty-sixth of April, when we shoved the 

 tender over the slippery " soap-flat," and, in boots loaded 

 with the tenacious white clay mud, stood upon the southern- 

 most tip of the mainland of the United States. An almost 

 unbroken, unsurveyed wilderness lay before us, with all its 

 interesting possibilities. A handful of settlers had taken up 

 'claims of government land along the shore, cleared a few 



