But We Resolved To Push On A
Little Farther And Make Use Of The Smooth Weather After Being
Stormbound So Long, Much To Toyatte And His Companion's Disgust.
We
rowed about a couple of miles and ran into a cozy cove where wood and
water were close at hand.
How beautiful and homelike it was! plushy
moss for mattresses decked with red corner berries, noble spruce
standing guard about us and spreading kindly protecting arms. A few
ferns, aspidiums, polypodiums, with dewberry vines, coptis, pyrola,
leafless huckleberry bushes, and ledum grow beneath the trees. We
retired at eight o'clock, and just then Toyatte, who had been
attentively studying the sky, presaged rain and another southeaster
for the morrow.
The sky was a little cloudy next morning, but the air was still and
the water smooth. We all hoped that Toyatte, the old weather prophet,
had misread the sky signs. But before reaching Point Vanderpeut the
rain began to fall and the dreaded southeast wind to blow, which soon
increased to a stiff breeze, next thing to a gale, that lashed the
sound into ragged white caps. Cape Vanderpeut is part of the terminal
of an ancient glacier that once extended six or eight miles out from
the base of the mountains. Three large glaciers that once were
tributaries still descend nearly to the sea-level, though their
fronts are back in narrow fiords, eight or ten miles from the sound.
A similar point juts out into the sound five or six miles to the
south, while the missing portion is submerged and forms a shoal.
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