We sailed from Boston Harbor straight for Cape Ann, and passed close by the twin lighthouses of Thacher, so near that we could see the lanterns and the stone gardens, and the young barbarians of Thacher all at play; and then we bore away, straight over the trackless Atlantic, across that part of the map where the title and the publisher’s name are usually printed, for the foreign city of St. John.  It was after we passed these lighthouses that we did n’t see the whale, and began to regret the hard fate that took us away from a view of the Isles of Shoals.  I am not tempted to introduce them into this sketch, much as its surface needs their romantic color, for truth is stronger in me than the love of giving a deceitful pleasure.  There will be nothing in this record that we did not see, or might not have seen.  For instance, it might not be wrong to describe a coast, a town, or an island that we passed while we were performing our morning toilets in our staterooms.  The traveler owes a duty to his readers, and if he is now and then too weary or too indifferent to go out from the cabin to survey a prosperous village where a landing is made, he has no right to cause the reader to suffer by his indolence.  He should describe the village.

I had intended to describe the Maine coast, which is as fascinating on the map as that of Norway.  We had all the feelings appropriate to nearness to it, but we couldn’t see it.  Before we came abreast of it night had settled down, and there was around us only a gray and melancholy waste of salt water.  To be sure it was a lovely night, with a young moon in its sky,

   “I saw the new moon late yestreen
    Wi’ the auld moon in her arms,”

and we kept an anxious lookout for the Maine hills that push so boldly down into the sea.  At length we saw them,—­faint, dusky shadows in the horizon, looming up in an ashy color and with a most poetical light.  We made out clearly Mt.  Desert, and felt repaid for our journey by the sight of this famous island, even at such a distance.  I pointed out the hills to the man at the wheel, and asked if we should go any nearer to Mt.  Desert.

“Them!” said he, with the merited contempt which officials in this country have for inquisitive travelers,—­“them’s Camden Hills.  You won’t see Mt.  Desert till midnight, and then you won’t.”

One always likes to weave in a little romance with summer travel on a steamboat; and we came aboard this one with the purpose and the language to do so.  But there was an absolute want of material, that would hardly be credited if we went into details.  The first meeting of the passengers at the dinner-table revealed it.  There is a kind of female plainness which is pathetic, and many persons can truly say that to them it is homelike; and there are vulgarities of manner that are interesting; and there are peculiarities, pleasant or the reverse, which attract one’s attention:  but there was absolutely nothing of