Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/192

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��A Summer on the Great Lakes.

��are those precipitous walls of red sand- stone on the south coast, described in all the earlier accounts of the lake as the "Picl^ired Rocks." They stand opposite the greatest width of the lake and exposed to the greatest force of the heavy storms from the north. The effect of the waves upon them is not only seen in their irregular shape, but the sand derived from their disintegra- tion is swept down the coast below and raised by the \vinds into long lines of sandy cliffs. At the place called the Grand Sable these are from one hun- dred to three hundred feet high, and the region around consists of hills of drifting sand.

Half-way across the lake Keweenaw Point stretches out into the water. Here the steamer halted for wood. We landed on the shore in a beautiful grove. " What a place for a dinner ! " cried one of the party.

"Glorious! glorious!" chimed in a dozen voices.

" How long has the boat to wait?" asked Hugh.

"One hour," was the answer of the weather-beaten son of Neptune.

" That gives us plenty of time," was the general verdict. So without more ado lunch-baskets were brought ashore. The steamer's steward was prevailed upon, by a silver dollar thrust slyly into his hand, to help us, and presently the whole party was feasting by the lakeside. And what a royal dining-room was that grove, its outer pillars rising from the very lake itself, its smooth brown floor of pine-needles, arabesqued with a flit- ting tracery of sun shadows and flutter- ing leaves, and giving through the true Gothic arches of its myriad windows glorious views of the lake that lay like an enchanted sea before us ! And whoever dined more regally, more di-

��vinely, even, though upon nectar and ambrosia, than our merry-makers as they sat at their well-spread board, with such glowing, heaven-tinted pic- tures before their eyes, such balmy airs floating about their happy heads, and such music as the sunshiny waves made in their glad, listening ears? It was like a picture out of Hiawatha. At least it seemed to strike our young lady so, who in a voice of peculiar sweetness and power recited the open- ing of the twenty-second book of that poem : —

" By the shore of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big Sea- Water, At the doorway of his wigwam, #

In the pleasant Summer morning, Hiawatha stood and waited.

All the air was full of freshness, All the earth was bright and joyous. And before him, through the sunshine. Westward toward the neighboring forest Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo, Passed the bees, the honey-makers. Burning, singing in the sunshine.

Bright above him shone the heavens, Level spread the lake before him; From its bosom leaped the sturgeon. Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine; On its margin the great forest Stood reflected in the water, Every treetop had its shadow Motionless beneath the water."

"Thank you. Miss," said Hugh, gallantly. "We only need a wigwam with smoke curling from it under these trees, and a ' birch canoe with paddles, rising, sinking on the water, dripping, flashing in the sunshine,' to complete the picture. It's a pity the Indians ever left this shore."

" So the settlers of Minnesota thought in '62," observed Vincent, ironically.

" The Indians would have been all right if the white man had stayed away," replied the Historian, hotly.

" In that case we should not be here now, and, consequently" —

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