234 Deer-Hunting on the Am Sable. 



variety of more or less accentuated Western types. There was a 

 good deal of confusion about it, and among it all our party met, and, 

 after a few moments of spasmodic and pleasant welcome and the in- 

 terchange of hearty greetings, we got on board the steamer. Our 

 dogs, twelve in number, were safely bestowed between decks, and as 

 remotely from the dogs of other people as possible ; all our baggage 

 was put away, nothing missing or forgotten, and we moved off from 

 the wharf with that sense of entire comfort that is incident only to 

 well-ordered and properly premeditated excursions. 



We had a delightful run up Saginaw Bay on a beautiful October 

 evening, on which the sun went down with one of those gorgeous 

 displays of color which England's most eminent art critic has told us 

 are seen but very seldom in a life-time. It was an impressive and 

 singularly beautiful spectacle, but one of which our West is prodigal, 

 and which is not consistent with insular conditions of fog and moist- 

 ure. A note of admiration sounded within the captain's hearing 

 had the effect of eliciting his practical valuation of it. "Humph!" 

 he said, "rain like blazes all day to-morrow." It was a matter of 

 common regret that the barometric impressions of this worthy navi- 

 gator were invariably correct. We made some stoppages at points 

 upon the shore, where seemingly unaccountable wharves projected 

 from the outskirts of desolation. At these we took off people who 

 might have been fugitives from some new Siberia, and debarked 

 people who might have been exiles going thither. But at half-past 

 eight o'clock we reached East Tawas, where, as the boat came along- 

 side, we were cheerily hailed out of the darkness by a mighty hunter 

 of the wilderness named Curtis, who had come down with his stout 

 team to meet us and help to carry our multifarious traps. We dis- 

 embarked amid a dreadful howling of the dogs, who charged about 

 in every direction, dragging their masters, in the darkness, over all 

 manner of calamitous obstructions, regardless of kicks, cuffs, or vigor- 

 ous exhortations. In half an hour we were comfortably ensconced 

 in an inn with an enormous landlord, whose mighty girth shook with 

 unctuous premonitions of an excellent supper. He produced half of 

 a deer slain that very day, and gave us an earnest of our coming 

 sport in the shape of a vast quantity of broiled venison, all of which 

 we dutifully ate. 



Our captain — for we had a captain, as every well-constituted 



