3. III. — THE ST. LAWRENCE.
On the third evening we had entered upon the St.
Lawrence, and were winding cautiously into the
channel of the Thousand Isles. I think there is not,
within the knowledge of the “all-beholding sun,” a
spot so singularly and exquisitely beautiful. Between
the Mississippi and the Cimmerian Bosphorus, I know
there is not, for I have pic-nicked from the Symplegades
westward. The Thousand Isles of the St. Lawrence
are as imprinted on my mind as the stars of heaven.
I could forget them as soon.
The river is here as wide as a lake, while the channel
just permits the passage of a steamer. The
islands, more than a thousand in number, are a singular
formation of flat, rectangular rock, split, as it
were, by regular mathematical fissures, and overflowed
nearly to the tops, which are loaded with a
most luxuriant vegetation. They vary in size, but
the generality of them would about accommodate a
tea-party of six. The water is deep enough to float a
large steamer directly at the edge, and an active deer
would leap across from one to the other in any direction.
What is very singular, these little rocky platforms
are covered with a rich loam, and carpeted with
moss and flowers while immense trees take root in the
clefts, and interface their branches with those of the
neighboring islets, shadowing the water with the unsunned
dimness of the wilderness. It is a very odd
thing to glide through in a steamer. The luxuriant
leaves sweep the deck, and the black funnel parts the
drooping sprays as it keeps its way, and you may
pluck the blossoms of the acacia, or the rich chestnut
flowers, sitting on the taffrail, and, really, a magic passage
in a witch's steamer, beneath the tree-tops of an
untrodden forest, could not be more novel and startling.
Then the solitude and silence of the dim and
still waters are continually broken by the plunge and
leap of the wild deer springing or swimming from one
island to another, and the swift and shadowy canoe of
the Indian glides out from some unseen channel, and
with a single stroke of his broad paddle he vanishes,
and is lost again, even to the ear. If the beauty-sick
and nature-searching spirit of Keats is abroad in the
world, “my basnet to a 'prentice-cap” he passes his
summers amid the thousand isles of the St. Lawrence!
I would we were there with our tea-things,
sweet Rosa Matilda!
We had dined on the quarter-deck, and were sitting
over the colonel's wine, pulling the elm-leaves from
the branches as they swept saucily over the table, and
listening to the band, who were playing waltzes that
probably ended in the confirmed insanity of every
wild heron and red deer that happened that afternoon
to come within ear-shot of the good steamer Queenston.
The paddles began to slacken in their spattering,
and the boat came to, at the sharp side of one of the
largest of the shadowy islands. We were to stop an
hour or two, and take in wood.
Everybody was soon ashore for a ramble, leaving
only the colonel, who was a cripple from a score of
Waterloo tokens, and your servant, reader, who had
something on his mind.
“Colonel! will you oblige me by sending for Mahoney?
Steward! call me that Indian girl sitting
with her head on her knees in the boat's bow.”
They stood before us.
“How is this?” exclaimed the colonel; “another!
good God! these Irishmen! Well, sir! what do you
intend to do with this girl, now that you have ruined
her?”
Mahoney looked at her out of a corner of his eye
with a libertine contempt that made my blood boil.
The girl watched for his answer with an intense but
calm gaze into his face, that if he had had a soul,
would have killed him. Her lips were set firmly but
not fiercely together, and as the private stood looking
from one side to the other, unable or unwilling to answer,
she suppressed a rising emotion in her throat,
and turned her look on the commanding officer with a
proud coldness that would have become Medea.
“Mahoney!” said the colonel, sternly, “will you
marry this poor girl?”
“Never, I hope, your honor!”
The wasted and noble creature raised her burdened
form to its fullest height, and, with an inaudible murmur
bursting from her lips, walked back to the bow
of the vessel. The colonel pursued his conversation
with Mahoney, and the obstinate brute was still refusing
the only reparation he could make the poor
Indian, when she suddenly reappeared. The shawl
was no longer around her shoulders. A coarse blanket
was bound below her breast with a belt of wampum,
leaving her fine bust entirely bare, her small feet
trod the deck with the elasticity of a leopard about to
leap on his prey, and her dark, heavily-fringed eyes,
glowed like coals of fire. She seized the colonel's
hand, and imprinted a kiss upon it, another upon mine,
and without a look at the father of her child, dived
with a single leap over the gangway. She rose directly
in the clear water, swam with powerful strokes
to one of the most distant islands, and turning once
more to wave her hand as she stood on the shore,
strode on, and was lost in the tangles of the forest.
