HELD AT ORCA 75 



sweltering heaps; many of the fish are pecked and 

 bruised by gulls and ravens while lying upon the beach 

 before they are brought in; the air is redolent of an odor 

 far different from that of roses or new-mown hay, and 

 very soon one turns away to the woods or to the unpol- 

 luted beach. 



The first tide was not high enough to lift our steamer, 

 so we passed another day at Orca, and all hands went in 

 the naphtha launches on a picnic to a wild place eight or 

 ten miles distant with the suggestive name of Bomb Point. 

 It was a lovely secluded spot, a crescent-shaped beach half 

 a mile long at the head of a shallow bay, flanked by low 

 wooded points and looked down upon by lofty mountains. 

 Here we were quickly roaming over one of those large 

 natural clearings or hyperborean meadows which we 

 had so often seen from the ship and which had looked 

 so friendly and enticing. This one, on a nearer view, 

 proved especially alluring and delightful — a strange air 

 of privacy and seclusion was over it all. It was not 

 merely carpeted to the foot, it was cushioned. Walking 

 over it was like walking over a feather bed — moss and 

 grass a foot deep or more upon a foundation of soft 

 peat. Wild flowers — yellow, white, pink, purple — were 

 everywhere. 



Little pools or basins of brown water, their brims 

 neatly faced and rounded with moss and grass were sunk 

 here and there into the surface. Stunted mossy hemlocks 

 and spruces dotted the landscape, and the near-by woods 

 threw out irregular lines of gray moss-draped trees — 

 novel, interesting. Such a look of age, and yet the 

 bloom and dimples of youth! Bearded, decrepit, dwarfed 

 spruces, above a turf like a pillow decked with flowers ! 

 I walked along a margin of open woods that had a sin- 

 gularly genial, sheltered, home look, and listened to the 

 dwarf hermit. The nearer we get to the region of per- 



