contest, without the former anxiety as to some other party’s getting the lead of ours in the trip up the Grand River.  But the result was not different this time.  A fine breeze kept us going all day and the following night.  But the next day the fog came.  It was no different from the cold, damp, land-mark obscuring mist of the Maine coast in its facility in hiding from view everything we most wanted to see in order to safely find the harbor that we knew must be near at hand, though we could not tell just where.  A headland, looming up to twice its real height in the fog about it, was rounded, and the lead followed in the hope that it would take us to the desired haven.  Soon a fishing boat hailed, and a voice, quickly followed by a man, emerged from the fog and shouted that if we went farther on that course we would be among the shoals.  We were told we had passed the mouth of the harbor, and so turning back, tried to follow our guide, but he soon disappeared.  Just at this moment when it seemed impossible for us to find any opening, the fog lifted and we saw a schooner’s sail over one of the small islets that lay about us.  Taking our cue from that we poked into the next narrow channel we came to, and getting some sailing directions from a passing boat, and from the signal man stationed on a bluff to give assistance to strangers, we glided into an almost circular basin, hardly large enough for the vessel to swing in, set among steep rising sides, into which many ring bolts were seen to be fastened, and perfectly sheltered from every wind.  The use for the ring bolts we found later.  The fog kept rolling over, and the little fishing vessels kept shooting in, till it seemed the harbor would not hold another.  As all sail had to be hauled down before the vessels came in sight of the interior, the vessels seemed literally to scoot into the basin.  A few of the vessels were anchored and kept from swinging by lines to the bolts, and the rest of the fleet made fast to them.  In all the number of vessels crowded into the space where we hardly thought we could lie was about twenty.  How they would ever get out seemed a puzzle, but the next morning it was accomplished, with a light fair wind, by all at once without accident or delay.  Had the wind been ahead, the ring bolts would have aided in warping to a weatherly position.

During the evening the mail steamer caught us, and after putting a little freight ashore, left us behind again.  Here were some strange epitaphs painted on the wooden slabs, also people ready to exchange or sell at a far higher rate than we had hitherto paid, anything they possessed for the cash which was all we had left to bargain with, the available old clothes having been already disposed of.

It was hard to disabuse the minds of the people at Square Island Harbor of the idea that we had come to seek gold or other valuable mines, the reason being that several years before a party from the States had spent considerable time prospecting in that vicinity and partly opened one or two worthless mica quarries.