point of the city.  Seven bridges must be passed ere the bay opened before me.  The boat had just cleared the last, when, remembering that no matches had been provided, and not knowing where a landing might be made, I decided to lay in a stock before putting to sea.  With a narrow shave past the Chelsea ferry-boat, I backed water, and came alongside a raft of ship-timber seasoning near one of the docks, tenanted by a score or more of semi-amphibious urchins, who were running races over the half-sunken logs, and taking all sizes of duckings, from the slight spatter to the complete souse.  Engaging the services of one of these water-rats, by a judicious promise of a larger sum as payment than the one intrusted to him for the purchase, I had soon a sufficient supply, and, resting the boat-hook on one of the logs, pushed off.  East Boston ferry was quickly passed, my boat lifting and falling gracefully in the swell of the steamer, and I began to feel the flow of the rising tide setting steadily against her.  Governor’s Island showed rather hazy three miles off; Apple Island, tufted with trees, looked in the shimmering light like one of the palm-crowned Atolls of the Pacific; and, just discernible through the foggy air, Deer Island and the Hospital loomed up.  A straight course would have saved at least two miles and avoided the strength of the tide; but, though my boat drew only three inches, and there was water enough and to spare on the flats, the sea-weed, growing thick as grain in the harvest-field, and half floating where the depth was three or four feet, collecting round the sharp bow as a long tress of hay gathers round a tooth of a rake, and burying the oar-blade, impeded all progress, and obliged me to pull almost double the distance against the rapid tide-set of the circuitous channels.  I worked through the bends and reaches, till the deep, strong current of Shirley Gut was to be stemmed, where the tide runs with great force,—­nearly fifty feet in depth of pure green water, eddying and whirling round, all sorts of ripples and small whirlpools dimpling its surface,—­with the rushing sound which deep and swift water makes against its banks.  A few moments’ tough pulling brought me through, and, once outside Deer Island, nothing lay between me and Nahant.  The well-known beach and the sandy headland called “Grover” stood out at the edge of Lynn Bay, and the rise and fall of the white surf, too distant to be heard, marked the long reef stretching seaward.  After dining, and allowing the boat to drift while rearranging my provisions, I took my place, and, getting the proper bearings astern, bent on the oars.

To those who have rowed only clumsy country-boats, with their awkward row-locks and wretched oars, slimy, dirty, and leaking, trailing behind tags and streamers of pond-weed, or who have only experimented with that most uncivilized style of digging up the water called paddling, the real pleasure of rowing is unknown.