no charms for us. "The world, the flesh, and the
devil" there hold undisputed sway: we desire a gentler rule.

"What do you say to a trip on the Great Lakes?" suggests my friend,
Ralph Vincent, with indefatigable patience.

"I--I don't know," I answered, thoughtfully.

"Don't know!" cried "the Historian"--(we called Hugh Warren by that
title from his ability to always give information on any mooted point).
He was a walking encyclopaedia of historical lore. "Don't know! Yes, you
do. It is just what we want. It will be a delightful voyage, with scenes
of beauty at every sunset and every sunrise. The Sault de Ste. Marie
with its fairy isles, the waters of Lake Huron so darkly, deeply,
beautifully green, and the storied waves of Superior with their memories
of the martyr missionaries, of old French broils and the musical flow of
Hiawatha. The very thought is enough to make one enthusiastic. How came
you to think of it, Vincent?"

"I never think: I scorn the imputation," repled Vincent, with a look of
assumed disdain. "It was a inspiration."

"And you have inspired us to a glorious undertaking. The Crusades were
nothing to it. Say, Montague," to me, "you are agreed?"

"Yes, I am agreed," I assented. "We will spend our summer on the Great
Lakes. It will be novel, it will be refreshing, it will be classical."

So it was concluded. A week from that time found us at Oswego. Our
proposed route was an elaborate one. It was to start at Oswego, take a
beeline across Lake Ontario to Toronto, hence up the lake and through
the Welland Canal into Lake Erie, along the shores of that historical
inland sea, touching at Erie, Cleveland, Sandusky, and Toledo, up
Detroit River, through the Lake and River of St. Clair, then gliding
over the waters of Lake Huron, dash down along the shores of Lake
Michigan to Chicago, and back past Milwaukee, through the Straits of
Mackinaw and the ship-canal into the placid waves of Superior, making
Duluth the terminus of our journey. Our return would be leisurely,
stopping here and there, at out-of-the-way places, camping-out whenever
the fancy seized us and the opportunity offered, to hunt, to fish, to
rest, being for the time knight-errants of pleasure, or, as the
Historian dubbed us, peripatetic philosophers, in search, not of the
touchstone to make gold, but the touchstone to make health. Our trip was
to occupy two months.

It was well toward the latter part of June in 1881, on one of the
bright