We must pass this by, and go down a plank-covered walk to reach the sandy-golden beach where the green waves dash with silent dignity, in these long calms of July.  Before the hotel the river flows also sleepily; but both shores are vocal with ladies’ laughter and the singing of young girls, the lively chatter of a party of pleasure-tourists.

The fine steamer that brought us to this point has gone,

  “Sailing out into the west,
  Out into the west, as the sun went down”;

but no “weeping and wringing of hands” was there; we knew it must “come back to the town,”—­that we are merely transient waifs cast upon this quiet beach, flitting birds of passage who have alighted in the porticos of the “Bigelow House,” Ontonagon, Michigan.

A long, low flat-boat, without visible sails, steam-pipes, or oars,—­a narrow river-craft, with a box-like cabin at one end, the whole rude in its ensemble, and uncivilized in its details,—­is the object that meets the gaze of those who would curiously inspect the means by which the adventurous novelty-seeking portion of our party are to be conveyed up this Ontonagon river to the great copper-mines that form the inestimable wealth of that region.  For the metallic attraction has proved magnetic to the fancies of a few.  A mine is a mystery; and mysteries, to the female mind, are delights.

What is the boat to us but a means?  If it seem prosaic, what care we?  Have we escaped the French fashions of a-la-mode watering-places, to be fastidious amid wigwams and unpeopled shores?

We all know what it is to embark for a day’s travel, but we do not all understand the charm of being stowed away like freight in a boat such as the one here faintly sketched; how seats are improvised; how umbrellas are converted into stationary screens, and awnings grow out of inspiration; how baskets are hidden carefully among carpet-bags, and camp-stools, and water-jugs, and stowed-in-shavings ice; how the long-suffering, patient ladies shelter themselves in the tiny, stifling cabin, while those of the merry, complexion-careless sort lounge in the daylight’s glare, and one couple, fond of seclusion and sentiment, discover a good place for both, at the rudder-end.

There is an oar or two on board, it appears, as we push off in the early dawn; and these are employed for a mile or so at the mouth of the river; then the current begins to quicken in a narrower bed, and a group of sinewy men betake themselves to their poles, lazily at first, until——­

But you do not know exactly what these implements are?

They are heavy, wooden, sharp-pointed poles, ten or twelve feet long.  On either side of the boat runs a “walk,” arranged as if a ladder were laid horizontally; but in reality the bars or rungs are firmly fastened to the walk, to be used as rests for the feet.  Here the men, five on a side, march like a chain-gang, backward and forward; placing one end of the pole in the bed of the stream, resting the other in the hollow of the shoulder near the arm-pit, and bracing themselves by their feet against these bars, they pry the boat along.