How pleasant is the course along a new river, the sight of new shores! like a life, would but life flow as fast, and upbear us with as full a stream.  I hoped we should come in sight of the rapids by daylight; but the beautiful sunset was quite gone, and only a young moon trembling over the scene, when we came within hearing of them.

I sat up long to hear them merely.  It was a thoughtful hour.  These two days, the 29th and 30th of August, are memorable in my life; the latter is the birthday of a near friend.  I pass them alone, approaching Lake Superior; but I shall not enter into that truly wild and free region; shall not have the canoe voyage, whose daily adventure, with the camping out at night beneath the stars, would have given an interlude of such value to my existence.  I shall not see the Pictured Rocks, their chapels and urns.  It did not depend on me; it never has, whether such things shall be done or not.

My friends! may they see, and do, and be more; especially those who have before them a greater number of birthdays, and a more healthy and unfettered existence!

I should like to hear some notes of earthly music to-night.  By the faint moonshine I can hardly see the banks; how they look I have no guess, except that there are trees, and, now and then, a light lets me know there are homes, with their various interests.  I should like to hear some strains of the flute from beneath those trees, just to break the sound of the rapids.

  THE LAND OF MUSIC.

  When no gentle eyebeam charms;
  No fond hope the bosom warms;
  Of thinking the lone mind is tired,—­
  Naught seems bright to be desired.

  Music, be thy sails unfurled;
  Bear me to thy better world;
  O’er a cold and weltering sea,
  Blow thy breezes warm and free.

  By sad sighs they ne’er were chilled,
  By sceptic spell were never stilled. 
  Take me to that far-off shore,
  Where lovers meet to part no more. 
      There doubt and fear and sin are o’er;
      The star of love shall set no more.

With the first light of dawn I was up and out, and then was glad I had not seen all the night before, it came upon me with such power in its dewy freshness.  O, they are beautiful indeed, these rapids!  The grace is so much more obvious than the power.  I went up through the old Chippewa burying-ground to their head, and sat down on a large stone to look.  A little way off was one of the home-lodges, unlike in shape to the temporary ones at Mackinaw, but these have been described by Mrs. Jameson.  Women, too, I saw coming home from the woods, stooping under great loads of cedar-boughs, that were strapped upon their backs.  But in many European countries women carry great loads, even of wood, upon their backs.  I used to hear the girls singing and laughing as they were cutting down boughs at Mackinaw; this part of their employment, though laborious, gives them the pleasure of being a great deal in the free woods.