Charlie stretched himself on his back, and taking the tiller over his shoulder, lazily watched the sails, occasionally casting a glance over the bow to direct his course, till, as the bay grew narrower, bringing the shores together, the beauty of the jutting points and coves, with their overhanging forests,—for as yet the axe had made but partial inroads upon the wilderness,—induced him to sit upright, and contemplate them.
He was now many miles from Elm Island, in a part of the country entirely unknown, and with land on both sides.
“How like a witch she sails!” said he; “what a ways I have come! and I know by the tide I’ve not been long.”
He now observed, on the port side, a wide reach making into the land, at the mouth of which were two little islands—a wild, picturesque spot.
“That’s a handsome place. I don’t believe but what a fresh-water river comes in there. I mean to see.”
Hauling his sheets as flat as he could get them, he shot in between the little islands; they where covered with a thick growth of spruce, that intercepted every breath of wind; but the flood tide was running like a mill-race, and bore him along between perpendicular precipices on each side, that looked as though they had been one, but sundered by some convulsion of nature, and fringed to the very edge with forest; the spruce, tenacious of life, clung to the fissures in the faces of the cliffs, not more than two hundred yards asunder.
“What a beautiful place! I mean to come here some time with John and Fred.”
Gracefully the boat glided through the glassy water, till at length the reach terminated, not in a river, as he had imagined, but in a marsh, through which ran a creek, into which poured a large brook.
The shores were most beautiful, now that the tide was nearly up, concealing the unsightly marsh, being undulating with many little points and coves thickly timbered with oak, birch, and basswood; the long branches of the oaks, with their broad green leaves, stretching far over the water.
Though boys are not much given to sentiment, Charlie acknowledged a transient impression of the beauty of the scene, by silently gazing upon every object within the range of vision. Impressions thus made are permanent, and years afterwards are recalled, and become the warp and woof of thought.