, so far that an expanse stretched
like the open sea for miles.

Although the larger islands boasted farms and fishing stations, the
majority were uninhabited. Carpeted with moss and heather, their
coast-lines showed a series of ravines and clefts and little sandy bays,
with a growth of splendid pine-woods that came down to the water's edge
and led the eye through unknown depths of shadow and mystery into the
very heart of primitive forest.

The particular islands to which we had camping rights by virtue of
paying a nominal sum to a Stockholm merchant lay together in a
picturesque group far beyond the reach of the steamer, one being a mere
reef with a fringe of fairy-like birches, and two others, cliff-bound
monsters rising with wooded heads out of the sea. The fourth, which we
selected because it enclosed a little lagoon suitable for anchorage,
bathing, night-lines, and what-not, shall have what description is
necessary as the story proceeds; but, so far as paying rent was
concerned, we might equally well have pitched our tents on any one of a
hundred others that clustered about us as thickly as a swarm of bees.

It was in the blaze of an evening in July, the air clear as crystal, the
sea a cobalt blue, when we left the steamer on the borders of
civilisation and sailed away with maps, compasses, and provisions for
the little group of dots in the Skaegard that were to be our home for the
next two months. The dinghy and my Canadian canoe trailed behind us,
with tents and dunnage carefully piled aboard, and when the point of
cliff intervened to hide the steamer and the Waxholm hotel we realised
for the first time that the horror of trains and houses was far behind
us, the fever of men and cities, the weariness of streets and confined
spaces. The wilderness opened up on all sides into endless blue reaches,
and the map and compasses were so frequently called into requisition
that we went astray more often than not and progress was enchantingly
slow. It took us, for instance, two whole days to find our
crescent-shaped home, and the camps we made on the way were so
fascinating that we left them with difficulty and regret, for each
island seemed more desirable than the one before it, and over all lay
the spell of haunting peace, remoteness from the turmoil of the world,
and the freedom of open and desolate spaces.

And so many of these spots of world-beauty have I sought out and dwelt
in, that in my mind remains only a com