pine that have been almost wholly consumed by fire. Here charred remains of what were at one time monarchs of the forest, either lie prostrate, or stand erect in blasted majesty on the naked rock, supported by the still spreading remnants of giant roots, but how deformed, how ghastly in the life-giving sunshine and the luminous green of the surrounding forest!

Such evidences of the scourge of forest-fires are seen everywhere, the yearly destruction of valuable timber being something enormous. The fire seems to have raged in spots, and has spared some of the best growth as well as that of inferior value, but where it has swept the forest the hoary giant, two hundred feet in height, is as helpless as the smallest sapling.

The Ontario Government sells "timber rights" to lumbermen to cut all timber over ten inches in diameter, and gangs of men have penetrated the forest everywhere, felling trees for lumber. The forest in consequence has lost much of its beauty, but after being denuded of the larger trees, a new growth of pine springs from the soil, that is very picturesque.

The configuration of the land as one proceeds north-west is a succession of hilly ridges alternating with deep valleys. Descending the valleys, distant lakes are observed, notably Trout Lake, Whitefish Lake and Horseshoe Lake on the right, and Clear Lake on the left. The blue waters of these lakes fill the cup-like depressions of the landscape with a poetic charm. The silence is profound, only the whisperings of the pines at times make a murmur like the washings of far-off seas. The islands that rise from the bosom of the lakes stand in lonely solemnity, thickly covered with pines, and the all-surrounding shores are shaggy with interminable forests.

Ascending the hilly ridges of the landscape, the aspect of the forest, stretching away on either hand until lost upon the crests of distant hills, is one of singular serenity and majesty. The sunlight illumines the splendid amphitheatres of foliage, which sparkle

continuously with scintillations of white sun fire. The air, streaming from the north; from the endless forests of the Hudson Bay region, from the frozen tundras of Arctic lands, but warmed to a degree on its journey hither, is gloriously cool and bracing. The climate is assuredly one that could transform a vast crowd of dyspeptics, hypochondriacs, pessimists and nerveracked, drug-racked humanity, into a race of happy beings, forgetful of their miseries. It is indeed the elixir of life.

Parry Sound is an enterprising town, located on a magnificent harbour with Parry Island forming the southern boundary. The scene is delightful. The site of the town at the mouth of the Sequin River is an ideal one, being located on an amphitheatre having a southern exposure. Far to the north

west and to the south lies the grand archipelago of Georgian Bay, whose wide waters stretch westward where one may travel hundreds of miles without touching the shore in any direction.

Since the opening of the railway to Ottawa, Parry Sound has become the focus of a vast trade in grain and other western products, and this fact, together with the extensive local mining industry, makes it a place of prospective importance.

Parry Sound is the central rendezvous for tourist travel in Georgian Bay. One may proceed north and explore a virgin archipelago of islands of every conceivable form and dimensions, the largest, Manitoulin Island, being as big as Long Island and ten times more picturesque, with the advantages of aboriginal inhabitants and teeming preserves of game and fish.

The journey south to Penetang in the ancient home of the Hurons is the more popular excursion at present, although the Northern Navigation Company of Ontario runs steamers north to the Magnetawan and French Rivers, and thence westward through the endless panorama of islands that engorges the North Channel, to far Sault Ste. Marie, and the more remote Mackinac Island, that guards the entrance to Lake Michigan.

A glorious excursion truly! The imagination cannot conceive the splendour of nature in their sublime solitudes when the summer's sun calls into new life the tremendous vegetation that covers every island with its beauty, and permits a romantic dalliance with every unknown shore. How rare the pleasure to discover every day a new terra incognita, as full, at this hour, of pristine beauty and wildness as when the Jesuit missionaries urged their canoes through the mazes of the islands southwards on their mission to the Hurons, two hundred and fifty years ago.

Let us follow in the track of the missionaries by embarking at 6 o'clock on a glorious summer morning,

on the steamer leaving Parry Sound. The gate of the archipelago leading south is of itself of unequalled beauty. Parry Island lies on the right, and the mainland on the left, and between and beyond there is a labyrinth of islands, serene and splendid, which it is the delight of the traveller to explore.

The brightness of the sun gives promise of a glorious day, and as we enter the Ten Mile Narrows the rapture of the

moment is profound. The vessel proudly sweeps between the hushed and splendid walls of vegetation that rise from islands on either hand, and, discovering still narrower passages, we move as in a dream through straits of blessedness, where the clear water is gemmed with lilies; where the cleanwashed rocky shores enclose little sandy bays; where the hushed pines stand happy in the sunlight breathing the wonderfully pure and quiet air.

It is a strange thing that so much wild beauty lies so near the haunts of man, that a region of romance, practically ten thousand miles away, can be reached from a busy Canadian town in fifteen minutes! Yet

we do not expect to see here any indications of humanity, so ideal are the conditions. One rather expects to see a nymph dividing the clear wave, or a centaur, or even Pan himself, haunting the forest solitudes.

As we progress, little interior bays are discovered in the islands, that still preserve the silence and mystery that brooded over them since the dawn of creation. It is a most precious thing to be able to gaze upon these sacred haunts to be the first, as it were, to disturb their virgin solitude, to taste the nectar of their ideal beauty. But to merely pass through the

foliage of forest crowned islands made splendid with the summer light and heat, of sloping rock and precipice rising from clear depths of water, of the cool streaming air laden with the aromatic breath of pine and balsam, will here find such an ecstatic environment.

Sans Souci, like the other islands, is a cyclopean mass of highly convoluted rock, rising in irregular terraces to a height of a hunded feet. The shore line is delightfully irregular, in fact ideally so. Several deep bays, or diminutive fiords, penetrate into the very heart of the island forming idyllic retreats, chambers of supreme loveli

islands on the steamer does not give the tourist an impression of the onethousandth part of their beauty. Happily the steamship company has erected a hotel on one of the most picturesque islands, known an Sans Souci, which contains over 300 acres of well-wooded bays and promontories. Sans Souci Hotel, with its subordinate cottages, are the only buildings on the island, and the outlook on all sides is a virgin landscape only disturbed by the daily call of the steamer.

Those who love the companionship of flashing crystal seas, of the swaying

ness, sanctuaries where one may pass entrancing hours.

The sparse soil produces park-like woodlands, where clumps of trees alternate with open sunny spaces. Nowhere is the timber too close for free locomotion in any direction. Soft beds of green moss carpet, the odorous groves, and fern and bracken make a delightful jungle that invites repose.

Such are the joys of Sans Souci. In these splendid solitudes where the only sounds are the murmur of the water and the Eolian sighing of the forests, one wonders at the absence of

mankind and only half believes the solitude is complete. Where is that harassed crowd of humanity that so longs to be at rest? Man, in the aggregate, is a creature of habit. He is so chained to his money-getting employments that he knows nothing of such joys as these.

An excursion from Sans Souci to the Moon River, a distance of fifteen miles, gives a fine idea of the beauty of the grand archipelago. To enjoy such a journey to its utmost, a seat in a cushioned stern of a rowboat towed by the steam launch, by a rather long cable, affords an intimate and impres

bayou is discovered a rocky inlet gloriously apparelled with the fragrant plumes of cedar. Here is a larger island whose deep ravines are engorged with vegetation that proudly climbs the acclivities, a haunt of beauty, that "wastes to sweetness on the desert air.

The vessel flies past rounded shaggy capes and fair and sunny declivities, covered with sparse greenery, where one might erect a home and live happily aloof from the world.

Secret passages that wind about the thicknesses of cyclopean rocks open to receive the steamer and her trail of

sive view of the scenery. From such a seat, as one glides over the swelling undulations of clear deep water, spotted with bubbles of foam, the vast panorama unfolds itself. The boat at times crosses wide gleaming sea-like expanses of water surrounded by a distant amphitheatre of islands and again glides through secret channels between precipitous walls of rock, or of dense vegetation.

The openings between the islands reveal profound reaches of water with still other islands beyond. In a deep

cedar boats, the mirror-like serenity of the water being rudely disturbed by the aqueous calvacade. The water is starred in places with floating waterlilies, which are moored to the bottom by the long sinuous stems. To thus float, as in a dream, with the objective faculties lulled to repose and the subjective entity roused to enthusiasm, one recalls passages from the poet's description of such scenes as these. There is a passage in Tennyson's poem entitled "Timbuctoo" which fitly describes the environment.

"Where are ye,

Thrones of the western wave, fair islands

green

Where are your moonlight halls, your cedars' glooms,

The blossoming abysses of your hills? Your flowering capes and your gold-sanded bays,

Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds?

Where are the infinite ways, which, Seraph trod,

Wound through your great Elysian solitudes, Whose lowest depths were, as with visible love,

Filled with divine effulgence, circumfused
Flowing between the clear and polished stems
And ever circling round their emerald cones
In coronals and glories, such as gird
The unfading foreheads of the saints in
heaven?

For nothing visible they say had birth

In that blest ground, but it was played about With its peculiar glory."

Here indeed is the ideal land of the poet visible in all its bright reality.

As one rushes over the surging flood each island seems to spin upon its axis, slowly revolving until it passes

away.

Some of the islands are owned by clubs and individuals, but not one in a hundred has ever yet been surveyed. A club from Cleveland, Ohio, owns Qui Vive Island, opposite which is Waubano Island. Sadie Island is remarkable for a natural formation of rock known as Collingwood Rock. Bentymon Island is a jungle of bosky vegetation.