me was calm; so that it was generally believed that shark had
upset the canoes and devoured the men. An occurrence that afterwards
happened to an Indian renders this supposition highly probable. This
man had been travelling along the shores of the gulf with his family--a
wife and several children--in a small canoe. Towards evening, as he was
crossing a large bay, a shark rose near his canoe, and, after
reconnoitring a short time, swam towards it, and endeavoured to upset
it. The size of the canoe, however, rendered this impossible; so the
ferocious monster actually began to break it to pieces, by rushing
forcibly against it. The Indian fired at the shark when he first saw
it, but without effect; and, not having time to reload, he seized his
paddle and made for the shore. The canoe, however, from the repeated
attacks of the fish, soon became leaky, and it was evident that in a few
minutes more the whole party would be at the mercy of the infuriated
monster. In this extremity the Indian took up his youngest child, an
infant of a few months old, and dropped it overboard; and while the
shark was devouring it, the rest of the party gained the shore.

I sat one morning ruminating on the pleasures of solitude in the
_palace_ of Seven Islands, and gazed through the window at my solitary
man, who was just leaving an old boat he had been repairing, for the
purpose of preparing dinner. The wide ocean, which rolled its waves
almost to the door of the house, was calm and unruffled, and the yellow
beach shone again in the sun's rays, while Humbug lay stretched out at
full length before the door. After contemplating this scene for some
time, I rose, and was just turning away from the window, when I descried
a _man_, accompanied by a _boy_, walking along the sea-shore towards the
house. This unusual sight created in me almost as strong, though not so
unpleasant, a sensation as was awakened in the bosom of Robinson Crusoe
when he discovered the footprint in the sand. Hastily putting on my
cap, I ran out to meet him, and found, to my joy, that he was a trapper
of my acquaintance; and, what added immensely to the novelty of the
thing, he was also a _white_ man and a gentleman! He had entered one of
the fur companies on the coast at an early age, and, a few years
afterwards, fell in love with an Indian girl, whom he married; and,
ultimately, he became a trapper. He was a fine, good-natured man, and
had been well educated: and t