ales,
And gentle breezes sweep
The ruffling seas, we spread our sails
To plow the watery deep.

Cape Cod, our dearest native land,
We leave astern, and lose
Its sinking cliffs and less'ning sands,
While Zephyr gently blows.

Now toward the early dawning east
We speed our course away,
With eager minds and joyful hearts,
To meet the rising day.

Then, as we turn our wondering eyes,
We view one constant show,--
Above, around, the circling skies,
The rolling seas below.

When eastward, clear of Newfoundland,
We stem the frozen pole,
We see the icy islands stand,
The northern billows roll.

Now see the northern regions where
Eternal winter reigns;
One day and night fills up the year,
And endless cold maintains.

We view the monsters of the deep,
Great whales in numerous swarms,
And creatures there, that play and leap,
Of strange, unusual forms.

When in our station we are placed,
And whales around us play,
We launch our boats into the main,
And swiftly chase our prey.

A STRANGE ESCAPE.

In 1658 there was a little French colony at Onondaga in New York. Some
of the men in this colony were traders, and some were missionaries.
They were living among the Onondaga Indians.

[Illustration: A French Missionary.]

The Indians had been very friendly, but the French found out that a
plot had been formed to put them all to death. Stakes had even been
set up in order to burn some of them alive. There seemed no hope for
the Frenchmen to escape. They knew, that, if they tried to get away by
land, they should all be killed. If they shut themselves up in their
fort, the Indians would besiege them, and they would starve to death.
They had no boats by which to get away by sailing through the lakes
and down the St. Lawrence River.

The Frenchmen went to work and built boats secretly in the attic of
their fort or trading house. They built them strong enough to bear the
floating ice. They had also some light canoes made of bark, which they
hid in the upper part of their house. The question now was how to get
away without the Indians finding it out and pursuing them.

One of the young Frenchmen had been adopted into the tribe of these
Indians. He invited the Indians to a feast. It was a feast, of a kind
the Indians give, in which every guest is obliged to eat everything
that is set before him, leaving nothing. The Ind