576 



Among the Thousand Islands. 



INLET TO THE LAKE. 



canoe shoot from beneath the hemlocks of the shore into the open, 

 freighted with a Natty Bumpo or a Chingachgook, breaking the 

 placid surface of the water into slowly widening ripples. In such a 

 spot, one evening, after a day spent in sketching, when paddling our 

 boat about in an indolent, aimless way, looking down through the crys- 

 tal clearness of the water to the jungle of weeds below, now frighten- 

 ing a pickerel from his haunt or startling a brood of wood-ducks from 

 among the rushes and arrowheads, we found ourselves belated. As 

 the sun set in a blaze of crimson and gold, two boatmen rowing home- 

 ward passed darkly along the glassy surface that caught the blazing 

 light of the sky, and across the water came, in measured rhythm 

 with the dip of their oars, the tune of a quaint, old, half-melancholy 

 Methodist hymn that they sang. We listened as the song trailed 

 after them until they turned into the inlet behind the dusky woods 

 and were lost to view. From such romantic and secluded scenes 

 one can watch the bustle and hurry of life as serenely as though one 

 were the inhabitant of another planet. 



About a quarter of a mile back of the Thousand Island House is 

 a spring of mineral water strongly tinctured with iron, clear as a 

 diamond of the first water and cold as ice. A little creek, a perfect 

 conservatory of aquatic and amphibious plants, winding in and out 



