"Would we go up the rapids?" We had heard of going down the rapids, but in reality the most wonderful part of the performance is going up. Not only is the current fearfully swift, even close to the shore as it is necessary to keep, but the water seems to be only a few inches deep, and the rocks are as thick as plums in a Christmas pudding. Yet two Indians, standing erect, one in the bow and one in the stern of the canoe, pole you up the stream against these terrible odds as easily and surely as a Harvard oarsman might row you across Seneca Lake. Then they pause for a moment. "How will you have it going down? Rough?" they ask. "Rough," we answer, wondering what in the world they can mean by speaking as if they were the autocrats of wind and current. But it seems there are two channels,--one near shore for the timid, and one in mid-stream. We were not to be betrayed into any exhibition of timidity after that first hesitating question, "Do you know the rapids well? How many times have you taken people down?" To which the quiet reply had been, "Three times a day, lady, for twenty years." Twenty thousand times, by rough calculation! So we went over in mid-stream, and were not sorry,--receiving as we stepped ashore what is probably a part of every programme, the compliment of being "the bravest lady that ever went over the falls." Many a pleasant day, or week, one might undoubtedly spend at the Sault Ste. Marie, or at Mackinac; but if you have only turned through the straits and gone southward again to Chicago through Lake Michigan, do not think of saying that you have taken the trip on the Great Lakes. To me the Great Lakes will always mean Lake Superior. It is something unique in the geography of the world, and you have the consciousness of your actual height above the level of the sea as you rarely have on any elevated land that is not actually a mountain. Ruskin says that for him the flowers lose their light, the river its music, when he tries to divest any given landscape of its associations with human struggle and endeavor. Our New World scenery, of course, has little of that wonderful charm of association; but there is something singularly impressive in the mere silence and vastness of our great Northern solitudes. We entered Lake Superior late in the afternoon, and the only event of the evening was a magnificent aurora. Toward midnight the gorgeous tints changed to a thin wedge of perfectly white light, against which in a duskier white the sails of passing vessels were distinctly outlined, though no hulls were visible.