558 The Halcyon in Canada. 



Indeed, there is no depth of solitude that the mind does not endow 

 with some human interest. As in a dead silence the ear is filled with 

 its own murmur, so amid these aboriginal scenes one's feelings and 

 sympathies become external to him, as it were, and he holds con- 

 verse with them. Then a lake is the ear as well as the eye of a 

 forest. It is the place to go to listen and ascertain what sounds 

 are abroad in the air. They all run quickly thither and report. If 

 any creature had called in the forest for miles about I should have 

 heard it. At times, I could hear the distant roar of water off beyond 

 the outlet of the lake. The sound of the vagrant winds purring here 

 and there in the tops of the spruces reached my ear. A breeze 

 would come slowly down the mountain, then strike the lake, and I 

 could see its footsteps approaching, by the changed appearance of the 

 water. How slowly the winds move at times, sauntering like one 

 on a Sunday walk ! A breeze always enlivens the fish ; a dead calm, 

 and all pennants sink ; your activity with your fly is ill-timed, and 

 you soon take the hint and stop. Becalmed upon my raft, I observed, 

 as I have often done before, that the life of nature ebbs and flows, 

 comes and departs, in these wilderness scenes ; one moment her stage 

 is thronged and the next quite deserted. Then there is a wonderful 

 unity of movement in the two elements, air and water. When there 

 is much going on in one, there is quite sure to be much going on in 

 the other. You have been casting, perhaps, for an hour with scarcely 

 a jump or any sign of life anywhere about you, when presently the 

 breeze freshens, and the trout begin to respond, and then of a sudden 

 all the performers rush in ; ducks come sweeping by, loons laugh and 

 wheel overhead, then approach the water on a long, gentle incline, 

 plowing deeper and deeper into its surface until their momentum is 

 arrested or converted into foam ; the fish-hawk screams, the bald 

 eagle goes flapping by, and your eyes and hands are full. Then the 

 tide ebbs, and both fish and fowl are gone. 



Patiently whipping the waters of the lake from my rude float, 

 I became an object of great interest to the loons. I had never 

 seen these birds before in their proper habitat, and the interest 

 was mutual. When they had paused on the Hudson during their 

 spring and fall migrations, I had pursued them in my boat to try 

 to get near them. Now the case was reversed ; I was the inter- 

 loper now, and they would come out and study me. Sometimes 



