They floated on, through the dewy morning hours, when the leaves were shining in the sunlight, and the birds were singing joyously; before the summer heat had dried the moisture, or had forced the feathered songsters to the shade. At noon, when the silence made the solitude oppressive; when the leaves hung wilting down, nor fluttered in the fainting wind: when the prairies were no longer waving like the sea, but trembling like the atmosphere around a heated furnace: when the _mirage_ hung upon the plain: tall trees were seen growing in the air, and among them stalked the deer, and elk, and buffalo: while between them and the ground, the brazen sky was glowing with the sun of June: when nothing living could be seen, save when the _voyageur's_ approach would startle some wild beast slaking his thirst in the cool river, or a flock of waterfowl were driven from their covert, where the willow branches, drooping, dipped their leaves of silvery gray within the water. They floated on till evening, when the sun approached the prairie, and his broad, round disc, now shorn of its dazzling beams, defined itself against the sky and grew florid in the gathering haze: when the birds began to reappear, and flitted noiselessly among the trees, in busy preparation for the night: when beasts of prey crept out from lurking-places, where they had dozed and panted through the hours of noon: when the wilderness grew vocal with the mingled sounds of lowing buffalo, and screaming panther, and howling wolf; until the shadows rose from earth, and travelled from the east; until the dew began to fall, the stars came out, and night brought rest and dreams of home! Thus they floated on, "from morn till dewy eve," and still no sign of human life, neither habitation nor footprint, until one day--it was the twenty-fifth of June, more than two weeks since they had entered the wilderness--in gliding past a sandy beach, they recognised the impress of a naked foot! Following it for some distance, it grew into a trail, and then a path, once more a place where human beings habitually walked.