sonal
attractions; "no one but a child would think of likening this handful
of leaves to a look at the real Atlantic. You might seize all these
tree-tops to Neptune's jacket, and they would make no more than a
nosegay for his bosom."

"More fanciful than true, I think, uncle. Look thither; it must be miles
on miles, and yet we see nothing but leaves! what could one behold, if
looking at the ocean?"

"More!" returned the uncle, giving an impatient gesture with the elbow
the other touched, for his arms were crossed, and the hands were thrust
into the bosom of a vest of red cloth, a fashion of the times,--"more,
Magnet! say, rather, what less? Where are your combing seas, your blue
water, your rollers, your breakers, your whales, or your waterspouts,
and your endless motion, in this bit of a forest, child?"

"And where are your tree-tops, your solemn silence, your fragrant
leaves, and your beautiful green, uncle, on the ocean?"

"Tut, Magnet! if you understood the thing, you would know that green
water is a sailor's bane. He scarcely relishes a greenhorn less."

"But green trees are a different thing. Hist! that sound is the air
breathing among the leaves!"

"You should hear a nor-wester breathe, girl, if you fancy wind aloft.
Now, where are your gales, and hurricanes, and trades, and levanters,
and such like incidents, in this bit of a forest? And what fishes have
you swimming beneath yonder tame surface?"

"That there have been tempests here, these signs around us plainly show;
and beasts, if not fishes, are beneath those leaves."

"I do not know that," returned the uncle, with a sailor's dogmatism.
"They told us many stories at Albany of the wild animals we should fall
in with, and yet we have seen nothing to frighten a seal. I doubt if any
of your inland animals will compare with a low latitude shark."

"See!" exclaimed the niece, who was more occupied with the sublimity and
beauty of the "boundless wood" than with her uncle's arguments; "yonder
is a smoke curling over the tops of the trees--can it come from a
house?"

"Ay, ay; there is a look of humanity in that smoke," returned the old
seaman, "which is worth a thousand trees. I must show it to Arrowhead,
who may be running past a port without knowing it. It is probable there
is a caboose where there is a smoke."

As he concluded, the uncle drew a hand from his bosom, touched the male
Indian, who was standing near him, lightly on the shoulder, and pointe