nd looked way down
into the blue green depths, seekin' a answer. But the shinin' waves on
top seemed to glitter mockin'ly and fur down, down in the green waves,
there seemed to look back a sort of a pityin' gleam that said to me:

"Poor creeter! pass on with your little vague theories and
conjectures; you don't know any more about me than the rest on 'em do,
who have tried to write about me." I felt kinder took back and queer.
So vain are we that we don't like to have our carefully constructed
theories overthrown. But even as I mused, a voice said to the right of
me--a woman talkin' to her little boy:

"The Lost Channel was named from the fact that durin' a war a large
body of troops got lost here in the channel in the late autumn and
could not find their way out, and was overtaken by the bitter cold and
perished here."

Well, mebby if is so, I d'no. But I wuzn't knowin' to it myself, nor
Josiah wuzn't. Well, onheedin' our facts or fancies, the river bore us
onwards on its breast. Past high green boulders risin' up from the
water with nothin' on 'em, not even a tree; jest gray rock lookin'
some like a geni's castle frownin' down onto the intruders into their
realm. Then anon a pile of high gray rocks crowned as the Sammist sez
"with livin' green." Then in a minute more a little landlocked bay
with placid water sweepin' back into a pretty harbor, tree shaded, and
mebby a boat anchored there like a soul at rest, or mebby a sail-boat
with two young hearts in it driftin' down the sea of their content, as
the tiny waves rippled round their oars. Then a grand big mansion
lookin' down onto us kinder superciliously. Then a small, pretty farm
house with snug outbuildings, a man lookin' at us from the open barn
door, and some children playin' round the doorstep. Then a big island
with grassy shores or wooded depths; then a tiny island, not too big
for a child's playhouse, and some that wuz only a bit of rock peekin'
out of the water.

And fur off all the time when we could see it wuz the blue hazy
distance full of beauty; ever-changin' glimpses of loveliness, givin'
place to new beauties. Fur off, fur off sometimes we could see distant
pinnacles and towers, all bathed in the blue shinin' mist. And as the
rapt eyes of our Fancy gazed on 'em, they might have been the towers
of the New Jerusalem, the Golden city, so dreamlike, so inexpressibly
lovely did they seem faintly photographed aginst the soft blue distant
heavens.

Bu