The only thing I liked at first to do was to trace with slow and unexpecting step the narrow margin of the lake.  Sometimes a heavy swell gave it expression; at others, only its varied coloring, which I found more admirable every day, and which gave it an air of mirage instead of the vastness of ocean.  Then there was a grandeur in the feeling that I might continue that walk, if I had any seven-leagued mode of conveyance to save fatigue, for hundreds of miles without an obstacle and without a change.

But after I had ridden out, and seen the flowers, and observed the sun set with that calmness seen only in the prairies, and tire cattle winding slowly to their homes in the “island groves,”—­most peaceful of sights,—­I began to love, because I began to know tire scene, and shrank no longer from “the encircling vastness.”

It is always thus with the new form of life; we must learn to look at it by its own standard.  At first, no doubt, my accustomed eye kept saying, if the mind did not, What! no distant mountains?  What! no valleys?  But after a while I would ascend the roof of the house where we lived, and pass many hours, needing no sight but the moon reigning in the heavens, or starlight falling upon the lake, till all the lights were out in the island grove of men beneath my feet, and felt nearer heaven that there was nothing but this lovely, still reception on the earth; no towering mountains, no deep tree-shadows, nothing but plain earth and water bathed in light.

Sunset, as seen from that place, presented most generally, low-lying, flaky clouds, of the softest serenity.

One night a star “shot madly from, its sphere,” and it had a fair chance to be seen, but that serenity could not be astonished.

Yes! it was a peculiar beauty, that of those sunsets and moonlights on the levels of Chicago, which Chamouny or the Trosachs could not make me forget.[A]

[Footnote A:  “From the prairie near Chicago had I seen, some days before, the sun set with that calmness observed only on the prairies.  I know not what it says, but something quite different from sunset at sea.  There is no motion except of waving grasses,—­the cattle move slowly homeward in the distance.  That home! where is it?  It seems as If there was no home, and no need of one, and there is room enough to wander on for ever.”—­Manuscript Notes.]

Notwithstanding all the attractions I thus found out by degrees on the flat shores of the lake, I was delighted when I found myself really on my way into the country for an excursion of two or three weeks.  We set forth in a strong wagon, almost as large, and with the look of those used elsewhere for transporting caravans of wild beasts, loaded with everything we might want, in case nobody would give it to us,—­for buying and selling were no longer to be counted on,—­with, a pair of strong horses, able and willing to force their way through mud-holes and amid stumps, and a guide, equally admirable as marshal and companion, who knew by heart the country and its history, both natural and artificial, and whose clear hunter’s eye needed, neither road nor goal to guide it to all the spots where beauty best loves to dwell.