AMONG THE THOUSAND ISLANDS. 



By HOWARD PYLE. 



THE terrific combat between Manabozho, the Indian hero, better 

 known as the Hiawatha of Longfellow, and his father, the 

 West Wind, was doubtless suggested to the first narrator of 

 that memorable event by the lakes of northern New York upon the 

 one hand, and those of the St. Lawrence chain upon the other, as 

 marking the cavities from which those Titans might be supposed to 

 have plucked the masses of rock they hurled at each other, the fall- 

 . ing fragments of which formed that peculiar geological phenomenon 

 known as the Thousand Islands, scattered through the St. Lawrence 

 for a hundred miles or so of its course. 



These islands, about eighteen hundred in number, stretching 

 throughout that broad portion of the upper St. Lawrence extend- 

 ing from Lake Ontario to the Long Sault, are of all sizes and of all 

 kinds ; some not more than a yard or so in extent, and some cover- 

 ing many acres ; some bare, rocky, and desolate ; some thickly cov- 

 ered with a scraggy growth of scrub pines and hemlocks; some 

 shaded with considerable forests of timber trees, and some cultivated 

 here and there, producing such slight sustenance as the inhabitants 

 can wring from an unfruitful soil. 



In the old Indian days, this beautiful extent of the river from 

 Clayton to Alexandria Bay, embracing an extent of sixteen miles, 

 widening almost to a lake and crowded with a perfect maze of islands, 

 went by the name of Manatoana, or Garden of the Great Spirit ; 

 and. indeed, in the time of Nature's undisputed empire, when the 

 larger islands were covered with thick growths of pine, hemlock, 

 white birch, and maple ; when the wild deer swam from woody islet 



