with a crust of bread I thought that I might have fared worse. Possibly the owners of the new steamers to be placed on the lakes next summer will introduce some improvement in the stewards’ department, which the ordinary traveller, they may be assured, will duly appreciate. We were passing through the chain of islands extending from Tobermory to the Great Manitoulin. The water is perfectly smooth. The passengers are lounging, smoking, or basking on deck. Others, proud of their prowess, are relating their adventures and experiences, enlivened with many an anecdote, to the amusement of knots of hearers. As we were running through these waters they were so beautifully smooth and the air so fresh and pleasant that my mind went back to the Adriatic as you see it near Venice, or to the western coast of Italy from Civita Vecchia to Genoa. What you miss is the deep, ultra-marine blue of the Mediterranean. Although above you to-day there is a sky not less cloudless, bright and blue than we see in Southern Europe, the hue of the water is a deep slate colour, but in no way wanting in transparency. We have a horizon only broken by the islands behind us and the Great Manitoulin, dimly lying to our right. Like the Mediterranean, this great inland sea does not always exhibit the glassy surface it presents to-day. As in the Bay of Naples, the waters of which all pictures depict in the brightest blue, the gale can sometimes produce an angry, turbid sea, so on Lake Huron, especially in the late autumn, we have many a storm, often to create the roughest of weather. Some thirty years ago, while crossing in a Mackinaw boat, those were not the days of steamers with four relays of meals, I was caught in a nor’-wester, and driven to take refuge to the windward of one of the smallest of the islands we are leaving behind us. We reached the shore before sundown by the most strenuous exertions. All of us in the boat were exhausted, and we slept soundly on the gravel beach until the following day. The island was but a few acres in extent, but we could not venture to leave it. To have done so would have been certain death, for the water rolled in on the exposed beach in giant, swelling breakers. All the subsistence the whole crew had for three days was a solitary rabbit, which we managed to snare, and a few biscuits we had in our pockets.