the scene,
unexpected channels cutting through the centre of a long, wooded reach,
broad open spaces studded with islets, narrow creek-like channels
between rocky island shores, in which the whole river seems contracted
to a slender stream, while farther on the channel expands to a mile in
width, and glimpses of other channels open behind distant islands. Quick
turns in our course plunge us into archipelagoes, through which a dozen
channels run and wind in every direction. Sudden openings in the wooded
shore along which we are swiftly gliding yield glimpses of charming
islands, here closing the view, there cut by narrow channels which
reveal more distant wooded shores, and lead the imagination suggestively
onward till we fancy that scenes of fairy-like beauty lie hidden beyond
those leafy coverts, enviously torn from our sight by the remorseless
onward flight of the boat. For hours we sit in rapt delight, drinking in
new beauty at every turn, and heedless of the fact that the breakfast
gong has long since sounded, and the more prosaic of the passengers have
allowed their physical to overcome their mental hunger.

One tall, long-whiskered old devotee of "cakes and ale," hailing from
somewhere in Ohio, shaped somewhat like a note of interrogation, and
sustaining his character by asking everybody all sorts of questions,
did not, I am positive, digest his breakfast well, for I took a wicked
pleasure in assuring him that we had passed far the most beautiful
portions of the scenery while he was engaged in absorbing creature
comforts, and that the world beside had nothing to compare with the
fairy visions he had lost. Old Buckeye, as I had irreverently christened
him, wished his breakfast was in Hades, and at once set out on a tour of
interrogation to learn if he could not return by the same route and pick
up the lost threads of beauty he had so idly dropped.

Another of our fellow-passengers was an English gentleman of perfect
Lord Dundreary pattern, his every movement being so suggestive of
those of his stage counterpart as to furnish us an unfailing source
of amusement. At Prescott, Canada, a New England college boat-club came
on board with their boat, and highly amused the passengers during the
remainder of the journey with a long succession of comical songs. Three
of them were sons of one of our venerable New England professors, one an
unvenerable professor himself, yet their tanned faces, worn habiliments,
and wild son