Yet they had put a curtain up at the window!  No human being could by any possibility look in at that window.  Even the curtain could only be detected with an opera-glass from the steamer that passed twice a week.  But the sweet instinct of privacy and home had had its way, and every night the little curtain that never shut out anything but the incurious moonlight or the innocent stars was drawn as regularly as the shades of a Fifth Avenue mansion.  Later we learned that it was the Life-Saving Station of Lake Superior.

“No nap this afternoon, ladies,” said the captain as he left the luncheon-table.  “You must be on the lookout for Portage River.”

All the afternoon we watched for the little river, eked out by a canal, that enables us to cut off one hundred and twenty miles of what would be the course around Keweena Point, besides giving what is perhaps the most interesting part of the whole trip.  So narrow is the opening of the river that no trace of it is to be seen till we are close upon it; yet swift as the dove from far Palmyra flying, unerring as an arrow from the bow, the great ship sweeps across the lake to exactly the right spot.  The river is hardly the width of a canal, yet curves as no canal would ever curve, so that the captain in giving orders has to watch both ends of the vessel to see that neither runs aground.  It would be impossible for two steamers to pass each other in the river, and the contingency of their meeting is guarded against by the fact that returning steamers have to go round the Point, being too heavily laden with flour from Duluth.  As it was, there were but thirteen feet of water in the river, and the Japan drew twelve.

Once in the river, we experienced a most extraordinary transformation.  Every one knows what it is to pass in a day or two from northern snow to southern roses, or in a few hours from valley roses to mountain snow; but here, in five minutes, and remaining on precisely the same level, we passed from October to July.  The cold lake-breeze died away, and on the little inland river the sun was actually oppressive.  Seal-skins were cast aside, and we sent hastily below for sun-umbrellas.  The speed of the steamer was slackened to four miles an hour.  You heard no click of machinery or swash of water against the sides:  we were gliding on through a green and lovely marsh, with water-lilies all about us and wild roses in the distance.  Cattle stood knee-deep in pleasant brooks, locusts hummed and buzzed in the warm air, all sweet summer sounds and scents encompassed us.  There was even a little settlement of scattered houses; but the expected steamer had evidently created no excitement in the inmates.  It would not stop; it brought them neither mail nor summer boarder:  why should they care just to see it pass?  One man, painting the window-sashes of his house with his back to the steamer, never even turned or paused from his work, though we were so near that he might have heard what was said about him on the deck.  It is not the dweller in the wilderness, but the denizen of cities, that longs for something to happen.