y
out of sight when I perceived a boat approaching the shore with a
curiously mottled sail. As it came nearer I saw that it was a quilt of
patchwork taken from a bed. In the bottom of the boat lay a barrel,
apparently of flour, a stout young fellow pulled a pair of oars, and a
slender-waisted damsel, neatly dressed, sat in the stern, plying a paddle
with a dexterity which she might have learned from the Chippewa ladies,
and guiding the course of the boat which passed with great speed over the
water.

We were soon upon the broad waters of Lake Huron, and when the evening
closed upon us we were already out of sight of land. The next morning I
was awakened by the sound of rain on the hurricane deck. A cool east wind
was blowing. I opened the outer door of my state-room, and snuffed the air
which was strongly impregnated with the odor of burnt leaves or grass,
proceeding, doubtless, from the burning of woods or prairies somewhere on
the shores of the lake. For mile after mile, for hour after hour, as we
flew through the mist, the same odor was perceptible: the atmosphere of
the lake was full of it.

"Will it rain all day?" I asked of a fellow-passenger, a Salem man, in a
white cravat.

"The clouds are thin," he answered; "the sun will soon burn them off."

In fact, the sun soon melted away the clouds, and before ten o'clock I was
shown, to the north of us, the dim shore of the Great Manitoulin Island,
with the faintly descried opening called the West Strait, through which a
throng of speculators in copper mines are this summer constantly passing
to the Sault de Ste. Marie. On the other side was the sandy isle of Bois
Blanc, the name of which is commonly corrupted into Bob Low Island,
thickly covered with pines, and showing a tall light-house on the point
nearest us. Beyond another point lay like a cloud the island of Mackinaw.
I had seen it once before, but now the hazy atmosphere magnified it into a
lofty mountain; its limestone cliffs impending over the water seemed
larger; the white fort--white as snow--built from the quarries of the
island, looked more commanding, and the rocky crest above it seemed almost
to rise to the clouds. There was a good deal of illusion in all this, as
we were convinced as we came nearer, but Mackinaw with its rocks rising
from the most transparent waters that the earth pours out from her
springs, is a stately object in any condition of the atmosphere. The
captain of our steamer allowed us