Toward the close of a dreamy, tranquil July day, a day made impressive beyond the possible comprehension of a dweller in civilization by its sun having risen for us over the unbroken wilderness of the Adirondack, a mountain-land in each of whose deep valleys lies a blue lake, we, a party of hunters and recreation-seekers, six beside our guides, lay on the fir-bough-cushioned floor of our dark camp, passing away the little remnant of what had been a day of rest to our guides and of delicious idleness to ourselves. The camp was built on the bold shore of a lake which yet wants a name worthy its beauty, but which we always, for want of such a one, call by that which its white discoverer left it,--Tupper's Lake,--whose waters, the untremulous mirror of the forests and mountains around and the sky above, gleamed to us only in blue fragments through the interstices of the leafy veil that intervened. The forest is unbroken to the water's edge, and even out over the water itself it stretches its firs and cedars, gray and moss-draped, with here and there a moisture-loving white-birch, so that from the very shore one sees only suggestive bits of distance and sky; and from where we were lying, sky, hills, and the water below were all blue alike, and undistinguishable alike, glimpses of a world of sunlight, which the grateful shadow we lay in made delicious to the thought. We were sheltered right woodsman-like;--our little house of fresh-peeled bark of spruces, twelve feet by nine, open only to the east, on which side lay the lake, shielded us from wind and rain, and the huge trees shut around us so closely that no eye could pierce a pistol-shot into their glades. There were blue-jays all about us, making the woods ring with their querulous cries, and a single fish-hawk screamed from the blue overhead, as he sailed round and round, watching the chances of a supper in the lake. Between us and the water's edge, and a little to one side of the path we had bushed out to the shore, was the tent of the guides, and there they lay asleep, except one who was rubbing up his "man's" rifle, which had been forgotten the night before when we came in from the hunt, and so had gathered rust.