y Indian neighbors, whose
lodges honey-combed the beautiful beach, that curved away in long, fair
outline on either side the house. They were already on the alert, the
children creeping out from beneath the blanket door of the lodge; the
women pounding corn in their rude mortars, the young men playing on
their pipes. I had been much amused, when the strain proper to the
Winnebago courting flute was played to me on another instrument, at any
one fancying it a melody; but now, when I heard the notes in their true
tone and time, I thought it not unworthy comparison, in its graceful
sequence, and the light flourish, at the close, with the sweetest
bird-songs; and this, like the bird-song, is only practised to allure a
mate. The Indian, become a citizen and a husband, no more thinks of
playing the flute than one of the "settled down" members of our society
would of choosing the "purple light of love" as dye-stuff for a surtout.

Mackinaw has been fully described by able pens, and I can only add my
tribute to the exceeding beauty of the spot and its position. It is
charming to be on an island so small that you can sail round it in an
afternoon, yet large enough to admit of long secluded walks through its
gentle groves. You can go round it in your boat; or, on foot, you can
tread its narrow beach, resting, at times, beneath the lofty walls of
stone, richly wooded, which rise from it in various architectural forms.
In this stone, caves are continually forming, from the action of the
atmosphere; one of these is quite deep, and with a fragment left at its
mouth, wreathed with little creeping plants, that looks, as you sit
within, like a ruined pillar.

[Illustration: ARCHED ROCK FROM THE WATER]

The arched rock surprised me, much as I had heard of it, from the
perfection of the arch. It is perfect whether you look up through it
from the lake, or down through it to the transparent waters. We both
ascended and descended, no very easy matter, the steep and crumbling
path, and rested at the summit, beneath the trees, and at the foot upon
the cool mossy stones beside the lapsing wave. Nature has carefully
decorated all this architecture with shrubs that take root within the
crevices, and small creeping vines. These natural rains may vie for
beautiful effect with the remains of European grandeur, and have,
beside, a charm as of a playful mood in nature.

The sugar-loaf rock is a fragment in the same kind as the pine rock we
saw in