156 POLLIPELL'S ISLAND. 



Upon subsequent enquiry, we learned from the owner of the 

 tract, that the miller and his men had gone with boats and, by 

 the aid of ropes made fast to the trees, had towed the island 

 from the centre to the side of the lake, and by felling trees upon 

 the main so that their branches should fall upon and interlace 

 with those growing upon the island, secured it permanently to 

 one of the shores between which it must have vibrated for ages 

 before becoming thus moored by artificial means. 



Meditative Reader, docs not such a wild freak of nature as 

 the production of that island and such a simple contrivance of 

 human ingenuity for converting it into a peninsula, call forth a 

 world of wholesome reflections in thee ? Think of the deli- 

 cate accident which must have brought the floating boughs 

 together which probably formed the first germ of that little 

 aquatic planet-ling ! How silently and unobtrusively must the 

 congeries have collected not to have awakened the suspicion of 

 the storm-king, ever on the alert to disperse them ! Only con- 

 ceive then the mosses, the plants that must have grown and 

 decayed to form the soil which produced those bushes which 

 afterwards become like sails to move the islet. Think of the 

 combinations of circumstances, through countless years, which 

 permitted the mass of fibrous earth to hold together while 

 drifting upon the storm-vexed lake until larger and tougher roots 

 could lace it through and through, and bind it compactly enough 

 in all its parts to support its present more lordly growth. And 

 then think of the birds of Heaven building safely in that forest, 

 while it still toppled on the waves, and the beasts of those wilds 

 making their lair upon a spot where they would be literally 

 " rocked" in their slumbers. 



