“Ay, ay, I’ve known people who couldn’t count beyond a certain number.  Your real land-birds never know their own roosts, even in a landfall at sea.  How many times have I seen the beach, and houses, and churches, when the passengers have not been able to see anything but water!  I have no idea that a man can get fairly out of sight of land on fresh water.  The thing appears to me to be irrational and impossible.”

“You don’t know the lakes, Master Cap, or you would not say that.  Before we get to the Thousand Islands, you will have other notions of what natur’ has done in this wilderness.”

“I have my doubts whether you have such a thing as a real island in all this region.”

“We’ll show you hundreds of them; not exactly a thousand, perhaps, but so many that eye cannot see them all, nor tongue count them.”

“I’ll engage, when the truth comes to be known, they’ll turn out to be nothing but peninsulas, or promontories; or continents; though these are matters, I daresay, of which you know little or nothing.  But, islands or no islands, what is the object of the cruise, Master Pathfinder?”

“There can be no harm in giving you some idea of what we are going to do.  Being so old a sailor, Master Cap, you’ve heard, no doubt, of such a port as Frontenac?”

“Who hasn’t?  I will not say I’ve ever been inside the harbor, but I’ve frequently been off the place.”

“Then you are about to go upon ground with which you are acquainted.  These great lakes, you must know, make a chain, the water passing out of one into the other, until it reaches Erie, which is a sheet off here to the westward, as large as Ontario itself.  Well, out of Erie the water comes, until it reaches a low mountain like, over the edge of which it passes.”

“I should like to know how the devil it can do that?”

“Why, easy enough, Master Cap,” returned Pathfinder, laughing, “seeing that it has only to fall down hill.  Had I said the water went up the mountain, there would have been natur’ ag’in it; but we hold it no great matter for water to run down hill —­ that is, fresh water.”

“Ay, ay, but you speak of the water of a lake’s coming down the side of a mountain; it’s in the teeth of reason, if reason has any teeth.”

“Well, well, we will not dispute the point; but what I’ve seen I’ve seen.  After getting into Ontario, all the water of all the lakes passes down into the sea by a river; and in the narrow part of the sheet, where it is neither river nor lake, lie the islands spoken of.  Now Frontenac is a post of the Frenchers above these same islands; and, as they hold the garrison below, their stores and ammunition are sent up the river to Frontenac, to be forwarded along the shores of this and the other lakes, in order to enable the enemy to play his devilries among the savages, and to take Christian scalps.”

“And will our presence prevent these horrible acts?” demanded Mabel, with interest.