Life — July 31, 1890 — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

She: OW, Isx'T 17 COLD! THERE MUST RE He: One. SHE was FROM Bostox. the forest, and are invited by the genial old boy (who isconductor, engineer and fireman, all in one) to help carry wood for the engine. You slide and roll over another hill or two, and then stop at a trout brook while the engine takes up water through a huze proboscis. Bye-and-bye, after two hours of adventure, during which you have penetrated nine miles of wilderness, you come upon a winding stream, known as the North Branch. There is awaiting you a boat which is as strange a craft as any that ever steamed away to a Mysterious Island—fat bottom, square ends, rounded corners, a deck around the smoke-stack, side-wheels driven by levers like grasshopper legs, and a fireman whose chief duty it is to shove the boat around the ox-bows with a pole. And what a voyage you have up the North Branch in the late after- noon! You are ascending another canyon of green ; alders fringe the banks of the stream and dip into it, while above them rise walls of spruce, and balsam, and hemlock, and birch,—tier upon tier of variegat- ed green. The river turns on itself like a chain of S's, sometimes almost making a figure 8. You reach the end of the journey up the enchanted stream about supper time, and are driven in a carryall to the Forge House. From its piazza you get a view of the first of the series of lakes and ponds known as the Fulton Chain, and right at your feet you see a graceful little steamer waiting to carry you to the Island. In the early twilight Captain Jack takes his place at the bow—tall ICEBERGS NEAR. Dip YOU MEET ANY COMING OVER? and straight, clear blue eyes, curly iron-gray hair, a trim uniform—al- together the handsomest man on the Chain, as he surely has been one of the best guides for many years. He stands at the wheel, with curi- ‘ous little mail pouches all around him. The little steamer zig-zags from camp to camp, and at every wharf there are men and women with greetings and chaff for Jack. You seem to steam up the lakes between cross-fires of laughter—and now the spirit of the woods is upon you, and you feel that here is freedom, rest and good-will. It is dark now, and the camp-fires are twinkling all along the shores. In the tortuous inlets between the lakes you have plucked water lilies, and raised your eyes to find yourself suddenly out of the darkness on a broad sheet of water that mirrors every star. You glide among the stars, on and on in the keen night air, until in the very midst of the lake you sce a black mound with lights flitting over it. As you near it a voice back of a swinging lantern cries ‘ Hello, Captain Jack,” and in a minute your boat scrapes the wharfs of the Mysterious Island. I need not tell you what you will find there—except that it will be a hearty welcome, a spring-bed (it is better than spruce) in a bark cottage, within a few feet of the lake, a number of good guides, a raging hunger, and health and happiness from day to day. Good-speed to you, and a safe return. Yours ever, Droch. comicbooks.com