chase. Showing us some antlers, he said: "This one belonged to a
majestic creature. But this other was the beauty. I had been lying a
long time at watch, when at last I heard them come crackling along. I
lifted my head cautiously, as they burst through the trees. The first
was a magnificent fellow; but then I saw coming one, the prettiest,
the most graceful I ever beheld,--there was something so soft and
beseeching in its look. I chose him at once, took aim, and shot him
dead. You see the antlers are not very large; it was young, but the
prettiest creature!"

In the course of this morning's drive, we visited the gentlemen on
their fishing party. They hailed us gayly, and rowed ashore to show us
what fine booty they had. No disappointment there, no dull work.

On the beautiful point of land from which we first saw them lived a
contented woman, the only one I heard of out there. She was English,
and said she had seen so much suffering in her own country, that the
hardships of this seemed as nothing to her. But the others--even our
sweet and gentle hostess--found their labors disproportioned to their
strength, if not to their patience; and, while their husbands and
brothers enjoyed the country in hunting or fishing, they found
themselves confined to a comfortless and laborious in-door life. But
it need not be so long.

This afternoon, driving about on the banks of these lakes, we found
the scene all of one kind of loveliness; wide, graceful woods, and
then these fine sheets of water, with, fine points of land jutting out
boldly into them. It was lovely, but not striking or peculiar.

All woods suggest pictures. The European forest, with its long glades
and green, sunny dells, naturally suggested the figures of armed
knight on his proud steed, or maiden, decked in gold and pearl,
pricking along them on a snow-white palfrey; the green dells, of weary
Palmer sleeping there beside the spring with his head upon his wallet.
Our minds, familiar with such, figures, people with them the New
England woods, wherever the sunlight falls down a longer than usual
cart-track, wherever a cleared spot has lain still enough for the
trees to look friendly, with their exposed sides cultivated by the
light, and the grass to look velvet warm, and be embroidered with
flowers. These Western woods suggest a different kind of ballad. The
Indian legends have often an air of the wildest solitude, as has the
one Mr. Lowell has put into verse in his