Though “Captain Pusher” made a landing at this point to procure a little milk for our tea, we did not go ashore, and were soon on our way once more with a freer prospect, and perhaps with somewhat expanded spirits. The setting sun, in the clear climate of America, is in fair weather almost always beautiful; and my recollections of the rosy and purple tints with which it adorned the feathery flakes of cloud that floated around the peaks of the Green Mountains, are to this day almost as bright in memory as when they first made my heart leap up to behold them in the soft summer sky of Vermont. As the lake grew wider and the darkness deeper, there was of course less and less to be seen; and the noble scenery at Burlington, where the width of the lake is greatest, and the shores assume a bolder and higher character of beauty, was to our great regret unavoidably passed in the night. Still, there is something in starlight upon the waters, in new and romantic regions, which peculiarly inspires me. The same constellations which one has long been accustomed to view in familiar scenes and associations, come out like old friends in the heavens of strange and untried lands; shining witnesses to the brotherhood of differing nations, and to the impartial benevolence and unsleeping love of God. But I have no reason to regret that the only night I ever passed on Lake Champlain was mostly spent in watching; for long before I was tired of gazing at Orion and the Pleiads, I was rewarded by the sight of one of the most splendid auroras that I ever beheld. In a moment, the whole northern heaven was illuminated with columnar light; and the zenith seemed to rain it down, so to speak—while the surface of the lake reflecting it, gave us, to our own eyes, the appearance of sailing in some bright fluid, midway between a vault and an abyss of fire. This display of glory continued to flash and quiver above us for several hours. There were, in quick succession, sheets and spires and pencils of variegated light, rolling and tremulous, wavy and flame-like, blazoning heaven’s azure with something like heraldic broidery and colours. Towards morning, the intense cold and heavy mountain dews drove me for a season to my berth; but I was on deck again in time to see the moon make her heliacal rising over the eastern peaks, in the wan paleness of her last quarter. The approach of day was attended with a fog; but it soon thinned off, and we made Plattsburgh in good time. Here we parted with our vessel, and her worthy commander; and though we neither gave him a piece of plate nor voted him an accomplished gentleman, we left him with such wishes as, if they have been fulfilled, have long since removed him from the helm of his sloop, and the waters of Lake Champlain, to a snug little cot at Burlington, and the company of any number of rosy little Green-Mountain boys and their interesting mother.