88 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
other geographical advantages. Ours is acces- 
sible from the larger lake only by taking the 
skiff over a narrow embankment, which protects 
our fairy-land by its presence, and eight distant 
factories by its dam. Once beyond it, we are 
in a realm of dark Lethean water, utterly un- 
like the sunny depths of the main lake. Hither 
the water-lilies have retreated, to a domain of 
their own. Inthe bosom of these shallow waves 
there stand hundreds of submerged and dis- 
masted roots, still upright, spreading their vast, 
uncouth limbs like enormous spiders beneath 
the surface. They are remnants of border 
wars with the axe, vegetable Witheringtons, still 
fighting on their stumps, but gradually sinking 
into the soft ooze, and ready, perhaps, when a 
score of centuries has piled two more strata of 
similar remains in mud above them, to furnish 
foundations for a newer New Orleans ; that city 
having been lately discovered to be thus sup- 
ported. 
The present decline in the manufacturing 
business is clear revenue to the water-lilies, and 
these ponds are higher than usual, because the 
idle mills do not draw them off. But we may 
notice, in observing the shores, that peculiar 
charm of water, that, whether its quantity be 
greater or less, its grace is the same; it makes 
its own boundary in lake or river, and where its 
