once been predicted by a Cracker friend—­quite “eat us plum up, bodaciously alive.”  In the early morning we fled, though not until we had seen how beautiful a home the old plantation once had been.  These were not Crackers among whom we had passed the night, but the “native and best.”  Not a fair specimen of this class, surely, but such as here and there, in the remoter corners of the South, are breeding such troubles as may well become a grave problem to the statesman—­the legitimate outgrowth of the old regime.  War-orphaned, untutored, unrestrained, contemning legitimate authority, spending the intervals of jail-life in wild revels and wilder crimes,—­such were the men in whose ruined home we had passed the night.

There was yet one more morning among the gorgeous-foliaged “scrub-hills,” one more gypsy meal by a lakeside, one more genial welcome to a hospitable Cracker board, and we were at home again in the wide sea of pines which stretches to the St. John’s.  In the ten days of our journey we had seen, within a tract of land some thirty miles long by forty in breadth, more than fifty isolated lakes and three prairie-chains; had visited four enterprising Northern colonies and numerous thrifty Southern farms; had found an air clear and invigorating as that of Switzerland, soft and balmy as in the tropics, while the gorgeous colorings of tree and flower, of water and sky, were like a dream of the Orient.

“But there!” said the Small Boy, stopping suddenly with a half-unbuckled strap of Barney’s harness in his hand:  “we forgot one thing, after all:  never found William Townsend!”—­LOUISE SEYMOUR HOUGHTON.

CANOEING ON THE HIGH MISSISSIPPI.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

[Illustration:  A LYNX STIRS UP THE CAMP.]

Itasca Lake was first seen of white men by William Morrison, an old trader, in 1804.  Several expeditions attempted to find the source of the Great River, but the region was not explored till 1832—­by Schoolcraft, who regarded himself as the discoverer of Itasca.  Much interesting matter concerning the lake and its vicinity has been written by Schoolcraft, Beltrami and Nicollet, but the exceeding difficulty of reaching it, and the absence of any other inducements thither than a spirit of adventure and curiosity, make visitors to its solitudes few and far between.  Itasca is fed in all by six small streams, each too insignificant to be called the river’s source.  It has three arms—­one to the south-east, about three and a half miles long, fed by a small brook of clear and lively water; one to the south-west, about two miles and a half long, fed by the five small streams already described; and one reaching northward to the outlet, about two and a half miles.  These unite in a central portion about one mile square.  The arms are from one-fourth of a mile to one mile wide, and the lake’s extreme length is about seven miles.  Its water is clear and warm.