SKETCHES OF A TRIP TO LAKE SUPERIOR.
III.
Gitchee Naigow, 1838.
The traveller has no sooner entered the vast expanse of waters beyond the Igomean capes, than he anticipates something like a non-fulfilment of the imposing promise of the contiguous mountain scenery, made by their rocky altitude. Mountains, it is true, are in store for him, and cliffs, and falls, and cascades, and caves of most fearful aspect, amid all the rude magnificence of nature; but he must traverse miles of the liquid plain, bounded by a coast of sand and bare hills, before these higher treasures of the grand and picturesque can be enjoyed. In passing these shores, a broad inland sea is before him. The waters are clear and blue. The sky is bright, and the air pure and fresh. Often the duck starts, with her half-fledged brood, from some sandy cove, or the gull displays her pointed wings, in rapid flight. Sometimes a raven on the distant sands excites a temporary interest in the voyager, under the impression of approaching a bear, or some monster of the forest; for the effects of refraction and mirage, along these shores, are often most surprising. Once we saw a beautiful martin nimbly retrace its steps from the water's edge up a steep bank into the forest, and more than once, the men landed to get a shot at a bald eagle.
Nor is the structure of the coast itself, in these less elevated parts, without interest. A bright stratum of pure yellow sand serves as a basis for the growth of pines, of two or three varieties. The water's edge exhibits a fringe of rolled pebbles, sufficiently varied in color, shape, and composition, to delight the most inveterate geologist. And between this assembled representation of all that is primitive and transitive, or medial and submedial, spreads a broad and smooth belt of hard sand, on which we had several fine races with the children. To walk here, away from the busy world; to breathe the pure air, and drink into the eye delicious views of the noblest lake in the world; is one of the purest enjoyments of life. And where there are so many objects to excite reflection, and delight the senses, it is impossible not to look from nature up to nature's God,' who has spread out so beautiful a creation for human occupancy. In some places there are extensive layers of peat, elevated several feet above the lake, and in others, pure massy beds of the finest iron sand, without a particle of admixture. And there is enough of this article, on the shores of this lake, to supply all the counting-houses in the world. At all places, the shores are so clean and sweet, that a person might sit down to his meals, or port-folio, without in the least soiling his clothes.
The tempests of autumn and spring have cast over these sandy coasts the decorticated and washed trunks of trees from other shores, which, after having been thus drained of their sap, and dried in the sun, furnish excellent fire-wood, and put it in the power of the traveller always to enjoy a cheerful camp-fire. We were often induced to sit around our evening fires, gazing at the stars of the northern hemis-
