f the lakes.
It bends to skirt the shore of Lake Huron, a great blue sea, and yet
but a link in the chain of great lakes that lead from Superior through
it to Erie and Ontario lakes, and on to the St. Lawrence.

We arrived on a beautiful evening at Algoma, a spot as delightful as a
Cornish village, on the beach of that inlet of Lake Huron called
Georgian Bay. We walked in the astonishing quiet of the evening
through the tiny place, and along the deep, sandy road that has not yet
been won from the primitive forests, to where but a tiny fillet of
beach stood between the spruce woods and the vast silence of the water.
From that serene and quiet spot we looked through the still evening to
the far and beautiful Islands.

In the wonderful clear air, and with all the soft colours of the sunset
glowing in the still water, the beauty of the place was almost too
poignant. We might have been the discoverers of an uninhabited bay in
the Islands of the Blessed. I have never known any place so remote, so
still and so beautiful. But it was far from being uninhabited. There
were rustic picnic tables under the spruce trees, and there was a
diving-board standing over the clear water. The inhabitants of Algoma
knew the worth of this place, and we felt them to be among the luckiest
people on the earth.

The islands we saw far away in the soft beauty of the sunset, and
between which the enigmatic light of a lake steamer was moving, are
said to be Hiawatha's Islands. In any case, it was here that the
pageant of Hiawatha was held some years back, and across the still lake
in that pageant, Hiawatha in his canoe went out to be lost in the
glories of the sunset.

II

On the morning of Tuesday, September 4th, the train skirted Georgian
Bay, passing many small villages given over to lumber and fishing, and
all having, with their tiny jetties, motor launches and sailing boats,
something of the perfection of scenes viewed in a clear mirror. By
mid-morning the train reached Sault Ste. Marie.

"Soo" is a vivid place. It is a young city on the rise. A handful of
years ago it was a French mission, beginning to turn its eyes languidly
towards lumber. It is on the neck that joins the waters of Superior
and Huron, but the only through traffic was that of the voyageurs, who
made the portage round the stiff St. Mary's Rapids, that, with a drop
of eighteen feet in their length, forbade any vessel but that of the
canoe of the adventurer to