CHAPTER XXII. 



MUSKALLONGE. 



EVERY person has, more or less, a conception of what 

 Fairyland must be like ; my ideas run into caves and grot- 

 toes, with shady nooks and flower-clad rocks, ferns luxuri- 

 ously covering jagged peaks, and creepers festooning im- 

 aginary roofs ; one moment the eye resting upon the eva- 

 nescent oleander ; at another, gazing with admiration upon 

 the pure and spotless water-lily ; but to leave the realms of 

 fancy and return to reality is but the work of an instant 

 the arousing of the sleeping man to the realities of life. 



Fancy the season of the year autumn, the day cloudless, 

 with the bluest and most transparent sky overhead that 

 mortal ever gazed upon, the water underneath your keel 

 the most pellucid, rapid, and laughing that eye ever rested 

 on, hundreds of islands on every side of the most fantas- 

 tic shapes, trees and shrubs crowding every available inch 

 of soil, covered with the most gorgeous colorings that ever 

 were represented by the arc of heaven, and a distance so 

 soft and undefinable, that the beholder wonders if he can 

 not see into another planet. Such, in truth, is the St. Law- 

 rence amidst the Thousand Islands on a fine day toward 

 the end of September. Where under the sun can such a 

 scene be looked upon? I search my memory in vain for 

 its counterpart ; and although the inland seas of Japan, the 

 broad and placid waters of the Hudson at the Highlands, 

 the palm-clad islands of the Indian Archipelago, the azure 

 seas and skies of the Mediterranean rise before me, beauti- 

 ful and perfect as they are, they can not compare with the 



