J.  From water Venus was born, what more would you have?  It is the mother of Beauty, the girdle of earth, and the marriage of nations.

S.  Without any of that high-flown poetry, it is enough, I think, that it is the great artist, turning all objects that approach it to picture.

J.  True, no object that touches it, whether it be the cart that ploughs the wave for sea-weed, or the boat or plank that rides upon it, but is brought at once from the demesne of coarse utilities into that of picture.  All trades, all callings, become picturesque by the water’s side, or on the water.  The soil, the slovenliness is washed out of every calling by its touch.  All river-crafts, sea-crafts, are picturesque, are poetical.  Their very slang is poetry.

M.  The reasons for that are complex.

J.  The reason is, that there can be no plodding, groping words and motions, on my water as there are on your earth.  There is no time, no chance for them where all moves so rapidly, though so smoothly, everything connected with water must be like itself, forcible, but clear.  That is why sea-slang is so poetical; there is a word for everything and every act, and a thing and an act for every word.  Seamen must speak quick and bold, but also with utmost precision.  They cannot reef and brace other than in a Homeric dialect—­therefore,—­(Steamboat bell rings.) But I must say a quick good-by.

M.  What, going, going back to earth after all this talk upon the other side.  Well, that is nowise Homeric, but truly modern.

J. is borne off without time for any reply, but a laugh—­at himself, of course.

S. and M. retire to their state-rooms to forget the wet, the chill and steamboat smell in their just-bought new world of novels.

Next day, when we stopped at Cleveland, the storm was just clearing up; ascending the bluff, we had one of the finest views of the lake that could have been wished.  The varying depths of these lakes give to their surface a great variety of coloring, and beneath this wild sky and changeful lights, the waters presented kaleidoscopic varieties of hues, rich, but mournful.  I admire these bluffs of red, crumbling earth.  Here land and water meet under very different auspices from those of the rock-bound coast to which I have been accustomed.  There they meet tenderly to challenge, and proudly to refuse, though not in fact repel.  But here they meet to mingle, are always rushing together, and changing places; a new creation takes place beneath the eye.

The weather grew gradually clearer, but not bright; yet we could see the shore and appreciate the extent of these noble waters.

Coming up the river St. Clair, we saw Indians for the first time.  They were camped out on the bank.  It was twilight, and their blanketed forms, in listless groups or stealing along the bank, with a lounge and a stride so different in its wildness from the rudeness of the white settler, gave me the first feeling that I really approached the West.