ensely
clothed with diminutive needle-wood, much of which is dead, so that the
pale yellow-green is toned with brown-gray. The water is intensely salt,
and is skimmed by wild duck and by low-flying, tufted water-fowl.

As we were passing along one morning, an Indian crew came dashing out in
a canoe, with a deer for sale. There were stunted-looking squaws in the
boat, and all quacked and gesticulated and grunted after the peculiar
linguistic fashion of the neighborhood. These Indians are wonderfully
deft with their fingers, and weave bottle-cases, satchels, baskets, and
table-mats out of split and dyed grasses with curious delicacy and
skill. Their face-type is the homeliest I have seen: enormous skulls,
high-angled cheek-bones, blinking black eyes, flattish noses, and shocks
of horsehair. Evidently they are expert huntsmen and sportsmen: often we
saw their camp-fires, or a canoe stealing along the silent water, filled
with crouching forms.

Day after day there was a never-ending succession of
lake-scenery,--long, winding lanes of green water between steep
snow-streaked domes and precipices. The evenings softened into
singularly lovely nights, with close-hugging shores, volumes of dark,
iodine-hued water, lingering stars, and phosphorescence. The light hung
over the hyperborean landscape as if loath to leave. At ten o'clock one
evening we went out and found the ship steaming up a lane of purple
glass,--the water magically still, the air full of soft, plaintive cries
from the breeding gulls, the tinkle of the parted sea around our bows,
and the dim, spectral water lighted up at the end of the long avenue by
a haunting aurora.

Many a time the cabin door formed a delightful frame for a
forest-picture,--gliding water, pale-blue sky, a broken shore, and,
behind, long lines of brilliant snow-peaks, with their chased and
frozen silver. We would lie asleep for a few moments in the cool
dark of the cabin-interior, and then wake up with one of these perfect,
swiftly-moving views in the foreground. Before we caught it, often it
had gone,--the pale, plenteous beauty of the fir-crowned shore, the
dancing islets, the sedgy strand-line, the many-colored rocks, with
their pools and fountain-basins of transparent water caught from the
deep and held in by their rocky framework in a lightness and purity of
crystal dew.

Then the ship ran dangerously near to the coast, or again out into the
open sound, with its mediterranean sprinkle