set us
to go out and see it, and early in the summer we sot sail, the hull on
us, for the Thousand Island Park, a good noble campin' ground, though
middlin' hot in some spots. I've been asked what made it so much
hotter there round the Tabernacle than it was up to Summer Land, where
the Universalists wuz encamped. And I don't spoze it is because they
believe in hotter places, but it kinder sets folks to thinkin'. Both
places are pleasant and cool enough in moderate weather.

I hadn't no idee that so beautiful a spot wuz so nigh us. For as near
as we've lived to 'em, Josiah and I never laid eyes on them islands
before. But I've hearn of folks that lived within' hearin' of Niagara
Falls that never see that grand and stupendous wonder of the world;
they didn't see it just because they _could_. Queer, hain't it? But it
is a law of nater, and can't be changed.

So one warm lovely mornin' we sot out. We went by way of Cape Vincent
which we found afterwards wuzn't the nearest way, but we didn't care,
for it gin us a bigger and longer view of the noble St. Lawrence. Cape
Vincent is a good-lookin' place, though like Josiah and myself, it
looks as if it had been more lively and frisky in its younger days.
Pretty soon the big boat hove in sight. We embarked and got good
seats, Whitfield full of bliss to think he wuz started for his
islands.

And sure enough, tongue can never tell the beauty and grandeur we
floated by that afternoon; nor pen can't, no, a quill pen made out of
a eagle's wing couldn't soar high enough. And my emotions, as I took
in that seen, would been a perfect sight if anybody could got holt of
'em, as I rode along on that mighty river that is more like a ocean
than a river, holdin' the water that flows from the five great inland
seas of North America, the only absolutely tide-less river in the
world. It is so immense in size that the spring freshets that disturbs
other big rivers has no effect on its mighty depths, though once in a
while, every three years, I think it is, the river draws in her old
breath in an enormous sithe two or three feet deep, and stays so for
some time. I d'no what makes it nor nobody duz. But truly there is
enough in this old world to sithe about, as deep sithes as a mortal or
a river can heave.

But to resoom forwards. The beautiful river bore us onwards, the green
shores receedin' on each side till pretty soon it got to be not much
shore but seemin'ly all river, all freshness and f