THE HALCYON IN CANADA. 235 



it about the nooks and corners and lay in wait for it 

 upon a little island crowned with a clump of trees 

 that was moored just to one side the current near 

 the head of the lake. 



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 converse 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 ap- 

 proaching 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 ob- 

 served, 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 

 tnd the next quite deserted. Then there is a won 



