66 East and West 
tion increase, which will naturally follow the 
denuding of the forest, and all the sooner will 
dry land appear. 
Many little meadows and swamps border 
the lake and these are but the forerunners 
of the end. During freshets they are sub- 
merged, but as the waters subside in the com- 
paratively dry season of July and August, the 
dank spongy humus is sprinkled with water 
lobelia, sagittarius, and water parsnip, one of 
the most graceful of aquatic plants. Some 
day when the waters have subsided never to 
rise again, these will give way to corn and 
potatoes. The denuding of the wilderness 
—the march of progress, in other words—is 
thus indirectly bringing this about. At dawn 
the deer come down upon these little flats to 
drink and get into the water, disappearing 
at daylight into the wilderness, leaving the 
muddy banks thickly besprinkled with their 
clean-cut tracks. So doubtless have they 
been at home in many a corn-field. 
Time will change more slowly the granite 
cliffs whose polished slopes rise abruptly from 
the west shore of the lake. Yet these record 
more changes than any other feature of the 
wilderness, though not in the lifetime of man, 
nor in the lifetime of trees. In such records, 
