iosity was easily gratified, for in most cases the owners had painted
their names, and sometimes their places of residence, in staring white
letters on conspicuous rocks. There was also exhibited, for the benefit
of invalids, by means of the same white paint, here and there the name
of a medicine that is a household word in this patent-right generation.
So the little steamer sailed, comforted by these remedies, through the
strait of Safe Nervine, round the bluff of Safe Tonic, into the open bay
of Safe Liver Cure. It was a healing voyage, and one in which enterprise
was so allied with beauty that no utilitarian philosopher could raise a
question as to the market value of the latter.

The voyage continued as far as Gananoque, in Canada, where the
passengers went ashore, and wandered about in a disconsolate way to see
nothing. King said, however, that he was more interested in the place
than in any other he had seen, because there was nothing interesting in
it; it was absolutely without character, or a single peculiarity either
of Canada or of the United States. Indeed, this north shore seemed to
all the party rather bleak even in summertime, and the quality of the
sunshine thin.

It was, of course, a delightful sail, abounding in charming views, up
"lost channels," through vistas of gleaming water overdrooped by tender
foliage, and now and then great stretches of sea, and always islands,
islands.

"Too many islands too much alike," at length exclaimed Mrs. Farquhar,
"and too many tasteless cottages and temporary camping structures."

The performance is, indeed, better than the prospectus. For there are
not merely the poetical Thousand Islands; by actual count there are
sixteen hundred and ninety-two. The artist and Miss Lamont were trying
to sing a fine song they discovered in the Traveler's Guide, inspired
perhaps by that sentimental ditty, "The Isles of Greece, the Isles of
Greece," beginning,

"O Thousand Isles! O Thousand Isles!"

It seemed to King that a poem might be constructed more in accordance
with the facts and with the scientific spirit of the age. Something like
this:

"O Sixteen Hundred Ninety-two Isles!
O Islands 1692!
Where the fisher spreads his wiles,
And the muskallonge goes through!
Forever the cottager gilds the same
With nightly pyrotechnic flame;
And it's O the Isles!
The 1692!"

Aside from the pyrotechnics, the chief occupations of this place
a