y indented
shores and its islands. Being strangers, we want to know the names of
the islands, and to have Fort Warren, which has a national reputation,
pointed out. As usual on a steamboat, no one is certain about the
names, and the little geographical knowledge we have is soon hopelessly
confused. We make out South Boston very plainly: a tourist is looking
at its warehouses through his opera-glass, and telling his boy about a
recent fire there. We find out afterwards that it was East Boston. We
pass to the stern of the boat for a last look at Boston itself; and
while there we have the pleasure of showing inquirers the Monument and
the State House. We do this with easy familiarity; but where there
are so many tall factory chimneys, it is not so easy to point out the
Monument as one may think.

The day is simply delicious, when we get away from the unozoned air of
the land. The sky is cloudless, and the water sparkles like the top of
a glass of champagne. We intend by and by to sit down and look at it
for half a day, basking in the sunshine and pleasing ourselves with the
shifting and dancing of the waves. Now we are busy running about from
side to side to see the islands, Governor's, Castle, Long, Deer, and the
others. When, at length, we find Fort Warren, it is not nearly so grim
and gloomy as we had expected, and is rather a pleasure-place than a
prison in appearance. We are conscious, however, of a patriotic emotion
as we pass its green turf and peeping guns. Leaving on our right
Lovell's Island and the Great and Outer Brewster, we stand away north
along the jagged Massachusetts shore. These outer islands look cold and
wind-swept even in summer, and have a hardness of outline which is very
far from the aspect of summer isles in summer seas. They are too low and
bare for beauty, and all the coast is of the most retiring and humble
description. Nature makes some compensation for this lowness by an
eccentricity of indentation which looks very picturesque on the map,
and sometimes striking, as where Lynn stretches out a slender arm with
knobby Nahant at the end, like a New Zealand war club. We sit and watch
this shore as we glide by with a placid delight. Its curves and low
promontories are getting to be speckled with villages and dwellings,
like the shores of the Bay of Naples; we see the white spires, the
summer cottages of wealth, the brown farmhouses with an occasional
orchard, the gleam of a white beach, and now and