300 TEAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPOET. 



All are well wooded, and in some there are a few 

 acres under cultivation as gardens, where the Indians, 

 from time immemorial, have been in the habit of 

 growing potatoes and maize. The water in the lake 

 is nearly lukewarm, being from 70 to 78 Fahr. : it 

 is, except at a very few places, of a dark-green colour, 

 and almost opaque from a profuseness of confervoid 

 growth. These confervas are minute, needle-shaped 

 organisms, of a bright-green hue, and about half an 

 inch in length. They abound throughout the lake, 

 and are in such quantities at places that the water 

 resembles green pea-soup. When pressed between 

 the teeth they have a pungent flavour like mustard. 

 Our mosquito-nets were here very useful for straining 

 the water ; but even after that process had been gone 

 through, it was not fit for drinking until boiled. A 

 few of the long deep bays receding from the lake are 

 free from this substance ; and upon their banks lived 

 the majority of the Indians who belong to this neigh- 

 bourhood. 



To lose one's way upon an expanse of water like 

 the Lake of the Woods, and to wander about in a 

 boat, as the writer did, through its maze of unin- 

 habited islands, where no sound was to be heard but 

 the dip of the oars at regular intervals, or the distant 

 and weird-like whistle of the loon, is to experience 

 the exquisite sensation of solitude in all its full in- 

 tensity. There are trees and rocks, and earth and 

 water, in all their varied and united beauty, but no 



