e leaps from the water half a mile away. "Did you see
the porpoise?" makes conversation for an hour. On our steamboat there
was a man who said he saw a whale, saw him just as plain, off to the
east, come up to blow; appeared to be a young one. I wonder where all
these men come from who always see a whale. I never was on a sea-steamer
yet that there was not one of these men.

We sailed from Boston Harbor straight for Cape Ann, and passed close by
the twin lighthouses of Thacher, so near that we could see the lanterns
and the stone gardens, and the young barbarians of Thacher all at play;
and then we bore away, straight over the trackless Atlantic, across that
part of the map where the title and the publisher's name are usually
printed, for the foreign city of St. John. It was after we passed these
lighthouses that we did n't see the whale, and began to regret the hard
fate that took us away from a view of the Isles of Shoals. I am not
tempted to introduce them into this sketch, much as its surface needs
their romantic color, for truth is stronger in me than the love of
giving a deceitful pleasure. There will be nothing in this record that
we did not see, or might not have seen. For instance, it might not be
wrong to describe a coast, a town, or an island that we passed while we
were performing our morning toilets in our staterooms. The traveler
owes a duty to his readers, and if he is now and then too weary or too
indifferent to go out from the cabin to survey a prosperous village
where a landing is made, he has no right to cause the reader to suffer
by his indolence. He should describe the village.

I had intended to describe the Maine coast, which is as fascinating
on the map as that of Norway. We had all the feelings appropriate to
nearness to it, but we couldn't see it. Before we came abreast of
it night had settled down, and there was around us only a gray and
melancholy waste of salt water. To be sure it was a lovely night, with a
young moon in its sky,

"I saw the new moon late yestreen
Wi' the auld moon in her arms,"

and we kept an anxious lookout for the Maine hills that push so boldly
down into the sea. At length we saw them,--faint, dusky shadows in the
horizon, looming up in an ashy color and with a most poetical light.
We made out clearly Mt. Desert, and felt repaid for our journey by the
sight of this famous island, even at such a distance. I pointed out the
hills to the man at the wheel, and as