I wish I could give you the least idea of the beauty of this evening; but while I try to put in words what was before me, the sense of its ineffable loveliness overpowers me _now_ even as it did then. The sun had set in that cloudless splendour, and that peculiar blending of rose and amber light that belongs only to these climes and Italy; the lake lay weltering under the western sky like a bath of molten gold; the rocky islands which studded its surface were of a dense purple, except where their edges seemed fringed with fire. They assumed, to the visionary eye, strange forms; some were like great horned beetles, and some like turtles, and some like crocodiles, and some like sleeping whales, and winged fishes. The foliage upon them resembled dorsal fins, and sometimes tufts of feathers: then, as the purple shadows came darkening from the east, the young crescent moon showed herself, flinging a paly splendour over the water. I remember standing on the shore, "my spirits as in a dream were all bound up," and overcome by such an intense feeling of _the beautiful_, such a deep adoration for the power that had created it, I must have suffocated if---- But why tell _you_ this? They pitched my tent at a _respectful_ distance from the rest, and made me a delicious elastic bed of some boughs, over which was spread a bear-skin, and over that blankets: but the night was hot and feverish. The voyageurs, after rowing since daylight, were dancing and singing on the shore till near midnight. Next morning we were off again at early dawn, paddled "trois pipes" before breakfast, over an open space which they call a "traverse," caught eleven bass-fish, and shot two pigeons. The island on which we breakfasted was in great part white marble; and in the clefts and hollows grew quantities of gooseberries and raspberries, wild roses, the crimson columbine, a large species of harebell, a sort of willow, juniper, birch, and stunted pine, and such was the usual vegetation. It is beautiful to see in these islands the whole process of preparatory vegetation unfolded and exemplified before one's eyes, each successive growth preparing a soil for that which is to follow. There was first the naked rock washed by the spray, where the white gulls were sitting: then you saw the rock covered with some moss or lichens; then in the clefts and seams, some long grass, a few wild flowers and strawberries; then a few juniper and rose bushes; then the dwarf pine, hardly rising two or three feet, and lastly trees and shrubs of large growth; and the nearer to the mainland, the richer of course the vegetation, for the seeds are wafted thence by the winds, or carried by the birds, and so dispersed from island to island. ISLAND OF SKULLS.