Read Ebook: Harper's Young People August 22 1882 An Illustrated Weekly by Various

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Ebook has 313 lines and 24544 words, and 7 pages

Perhaps the beach in cutting off the river shut in a part of the sea, so that there are fish and oysters, sea-mosses and crabs, shut in behind the beach. They do not seem to care. They grow all the better in the still water, safe from those terrible waves that used to tear them from the sand in storms. The oysters find the quiet water a good home, and they grow there by millions on millions. As the old fellows die or are killed by the star-fish, the young oysters build their homes on top of the shells of their fathers. Millions of other fish, hermit-crabs, lobsters, and clams, live and die there, and they too cover the bottom of the lagoon with their dead shells. Thus it happens that even the fishes begin to fill up the place by covering the bottom with their empty houses.

Far up the river are weeds and grasses growing along the edge of the water. They drop their seeds in the river, and the seeds float down till they reach the smooth water behind the beach. The sea-birds find the warm waters of the lagoon a good feeding-place, and they gather there by hundreds. They too bring seeds from distant places and drop them here. Perhaps in quiet corners where the water is not quite as salt as in the sea these seeds find a chance to grow. They spring up on the banks of mud left here by the tide. The poor things find their new home very different from the place where they were born, and they have a hard struggle to live. Still they make a brave fight for existence, and even if they die, their dead stalks and leaves serve as a bed for new seeds to live still longer another year.

Then comes another change. The sea plants growing under water find the still water very different from the open sea where they grew before the beach cut them off from their home. The river is all the time bringing down fresh-water, and as the beach cuts off the sea, the water in the lagoon begins to grow fresh. From year to year the water tastes less like sea water, and more like river water. The poor plants were meant for the sea, and the brackish water does not suit them. The beautiful purple mosses, the long brown weeds, and the bright green sea-lettuce fade and die. They fall down, and make a black mould on the bottom of the lake. The poor fish feel it too. The clams and oysters miss the salt-water. Then the terrible mud smothers and chokes them, and they and the other fish die, and their empty shells cover the muddy bottom of the still water.

All this may take years and years, yet the change goes steadily on. The grasses grow higher, and higher, and tiny spears of marsh grass stand up out of water where once it was quite deep. The lake is filling up, and year by year the grass spreads over the water.

In this picture you see just such a place as this near Barnegat, on the coast of New Jersey. The grass has already begun to form islands in the water. The river appears to get discouraged, and wanders about as if it did not know what to do. The grass spreads wider and wider, and the lake begins to look like a green and level meadow. Men come in long boots wading through the shallow water and cut the grass. When it is dried, it is called salt hay. Cattle like to eat it, for it has a flavor of the old, old sea that once rolled over the place.

Every year the black wet soil grows firmer. Men dig trenches through it to let the water drain away. Along the banks of the river they pile the black peaty sods in long rows. This makes a dike or dam to keep the river from spreading over the grass in floods. Now the land begins to dry very fast. Wild cranberries, "cat-o'-nine-tails," and young bushes spring up. Perhaps a road is laid out over the meadows, and then houses are built, and boys and girls come to live on the smooth plain that grew out of the sea.

If you should visit the meadows at Chelsea, in Massachusetts, you would see just such a lagoon shut in by a travelling beach. It is nearly dry now, and in summer you will see the farmers cutting the salt grass. The Great South Bay on Long Island is another place where the change is going on. If you cross the Hackensack Meadows near Jersey City, you will see the work nearly finished. This vast level plain was once all water. The Passaic and the Hackensack rivers still wind through the level fields, but the work has gone so far that the land is now nearly dry. How it happened that all this great lake came to be filled up we can not tell, but we can plainly see that it was once water and is now turning to dry land.

How do we know all this about these meadows along the coast? Some of the places look very nearly the same to-day as two hundred years ago. The Indians never said that the water once flowed here. There is no record of these things. Indeed! There are plenty of records.

In the first place, you can almost always find the beach at the outside of the meadows. Nearly all the beaches on Long Island have meadows behind them. There may not be a river near, but that makes no difference, for sometimes a beach may grow across a bay between two capes.

If we dig a hole deep down into such a meadow we may find the whole story. First we turn up the black sod full of stems and roots of the grass. Under this the soil is finer, for the roots and leaves have moulded away. What's that? The spade strikes something hard. It is flat and rough, and covered with fine black mould. Wash it well, and we find it is a shell--an oyster shell. Strange that it should be there. Dig deeper, and we find more, perhaps a great quantity of them, bedded thickly one over the other. Here's the truth of the matter. This is an old oyster bed. These oysters did not come there by chance. They must have lived there, and as they live under salt-water, it is plain that where we stand was once a part of the sea.

We may dig deeper, and find more records of the old lake. See those black stones. How smooth and round they are! You remember the smooth stones we saw rolling in the surf on the beach? We can not help thinking that these stones were once tumbled about in the surf on some old beach. This is the way the marsh tells its own story, and repeats the wonderful tale of its birth from the sea.

A SEVERE SCHOOL-MASTER.

But your eyes are so big and so bright, And your spectacles frighten me so! And I can not remember my lesson When you look at me that way, you know.

Spell "mouse," did you say? M-O-U-- Oh, you don't know how fierce you do look! And I think I can see a great claw Sticking out from the edge of the book.

If you only were not quite so big, And your nose not so pointed and queer-- M-O-U--I don't know what comes next, I can not remember. Oh dear!

THE CRUISE OF THE CANOE CLUB.

Begun in No. 146, HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE.

BY W. L. ALDEN,

It was some time before the canoes were ready, and in the mean time the young canoeists met with a new difficulty. The canoe-builders wrote to them wishing to know how they would have the canoes rigged. It had never occurred to the boys that there was more than one rig used on canoes, and of course they did not know how to answer the builders' question. So they went to the Commodore, and told him their difficulty.

"I might do," said he, "just as I did when I told you to go and ask four different canoeists which is the best canoe; but I won't put you to that trouble. I rather like the Lord Ross lateen rig better than any other, but as you are going to try different kinds of canoes, it would be a good idea for you to try different rigs. For example, have your 'Rob Roy' rigged with lateen sails; rig the 'Shadow' with a balance lug; the 'Rice Laker' with a sharpie leg-of-mutton, and the canvas canoe with the standing lug. Each one of these rigs has its advocates, who will prove to you that it is better than any other, and you can't do better than to try them all. Only be sure to tell the builders that every canoe must have two masts, and neither of the two sails must be too big to be safely handled."

"How does it happen that every canoeist is so perfectly certain that he has the best canoe and the best rig in existence?" asked Tom.

"That is one of the great merits of canoeing," replied the Commodore. "It makes every man contented, and develops in him decision of character. I've known a canoeist to have a canoe so leaky that he spent half his time bailing her out, and rigged in such a way that she would neither sail nor do anything in a breeze except capsize; and yet he was never tired of boasting of the immense superiority of his canoe. There's a great deal of suffering in canoeing," continued the Commodore, musingly, "but its effects on the moral character are priceless. My dear boys, you have no idea how happy and contented you will be when you are wet through, cramped and blistered, and have to go into camp in a heavy rain, and without any supper except dry crackers."

The "Rob Roy" and the "Shadow" were built with white cedar planks and Spanish cedar decks. They shone with varnish, and their nickel-plated metal-work was as bright as silver. They were decidedly the prettiest of the four canoes, and it would have been very difficult to decide which was the prettier of the two. The "Rice Laker" was built without timbers or a keel, and was formed of two thicknesses of planking riveted together, the grain of the inner planking crossing that of the outer planking at right angles. She looked strong and serviceable, and before Tom had been in possession of her half an hour he was insisting that she was much the handiest canoe of the squadron, simply because she had no deck. The outside planks were of butternut, but they were pierced with so many rivets that they did not present so elegant an appearance as did the planks of the "Shadow" and the "Rob Roy." The canvas canoe consisted of a wooden skeleton frame, covered and decked with painted canvas. She was very much the same in model as the "Shadow," and though she seemed ugly in comparison with her varnished sisters, Charley claimed that he would get more comfort out of his canoe than the other boys would out of theirs, for the reason that scratches that would spoil the beauty of the varnished wood could not injure the painted canvas. Thus each boy was quite contented, and insisted that he would not change canoes with anybody. They were equally contented with the way in which their canoes were rigged, and they no longer wondered at the confident way in which the canoeists to whom the Commodore had introduced them spoke of the merits of their respective boats.

The boys had intended to join the American Canoe Association, but Uncle John suggested that they would do well to make a cruise, and to become real canoeists before asking for admission to the association. They then decided to form a canoe club of their own, which they did; and Harry was elected the first Commodore of the Columbian Canoe Club, the flag of which was a pointed burgee of blue silk with a white paddle worked upon it. Each canoe carried its private signal in addition to the club flag, and bore its name in gilt letters on a blue ground on each bow.

Where to cruise was a question which was decided and reconsidered half a dozen times. From the books which they had read the boys had learned that there is, if anything, more fun in cruising on a narrow stream than in sailing on broad rivers; that running rapids is a delightful sport, and that streams should always be descended instead of ascended in a canoe. They therefore wanted to discover a narrow stream with safe and easy rapids, and also to cruise on some lake or wide river where they could test the canoes under sail and under paddle in rough water. They learned more of the geography of the Eastern States and of Canada, in searching the map for a good cruising route, than they had ever learned at school; and they finally selected a route which seemed to combine all varieties of canoeing.

The cruise was to begin at the southern end of Lake Memphremagog, in Vermont. On this lake, which is thirty miles long, the young canoeists expected to spend several days, and to learn to handle the canoes under sail. From the northern end of the lake, which is in Canada, they intended to descend its outlet, the Magog River, which is a narrow stream emptying into the St. Francis River at Sherbrooke. From Sherbrooke the St. Francis was to be descended to the St. Lawrence, down which the canoes were to sail to Quebec. They wrote to the post-master at Sherbrooke, asking him if the Magog and the St. Francis were navigable by canoes, and when he replied that there was one or two rapids in the Magog, which they could easily run, they were more than ever satisfied with their route.

Dinner was all ready, for, under the name of breakfast, it was waiting for the passengers of the train, which made a stop of half an hour at Newport. A band was playing on the deck of a steamer which was just about to start down the lake, and the boys displayed such appetites, and called for so many things, as they sat near the open window looking out on the beautiful landscape, that they astonished the waiter.

Before he had gone three rods he looked like some new kind of porcupine with gigantic quills sticking out all over him. Then he began to drop things, and, stooping to pick them up, managed to trip himself and fall with a tremendous clatter. He picked himself up, and made sixteen journeys between the spot where he fell and the shore of the lake, carrying only one spar at a time, and grasping that with both hands. His companions sat down on the grass and laughed to see the deliberate way in which he made his successive journeys, but Joe, with a perfectly serious face, said that he was going to get the better of those spars, no matter how much trouble it might cost him, and that he was not going to allow them to get together and play tricks on him again.

"'Boys, isn't this perfectly elegant?" exclaimed Harry, laying down his paddle when the fleet was about a mile from the shore, and bathing his hot head with water from the lake. "Did you ever see anything so lovely as the blue water?"

"Yes," said Charley; "the water's all right outside of the canoes, but I'd rather have a little less inside of mine."

"What do you mean?" asked Harry. "Is she leaking?"

"She's half full of water, that's all," replied Charley, beginning to bail vigorously with his hat.

"Halloo!" cried Joe, suddenly. "Here's the water up to the top of my cushions."

"We'd better paddle on and get ashore as soon as possible," said Harry; "my boat is leaking a little too."

Charley bailed steadily for ten minutes, and somewhat reduced the amount of water in his canoe. The moment he began paddling, however, the leak increased. He paddled with his utmost strength, knowing that if he did not soon reach land he would be swamped; but the water-logged canoe was very heavy, and he could not drive her rapidly through the water. His companions kept near him, and advised him to drop his paddle and bail, but he knew that the water was coming in faster than he could bail it out, and so he wasted no time in the effort. It soon became evident that his canoe would never keep afloat to reach the sand-spit for which he had been steering, so he turned aside and paddled for a little clump of bushes, where he knew the water must be shallow. Suddenly he stopped paddling, and almost at the same moment his canoe sank under him, and he sprang up to swim clear of her.

PHRONY JANE'S LAWN PARTY.

BY SYDNEY DAYRE.

"Now, Johnny, leave your saw."

"Ah, mamma, can't I just finish this bracket?"

"No, dear. All your Saturday evening's work is to be done yet."

It was hard, Johnny thought. A half-hour more would finish the beautiful deer bracket; the scroll-saw still had the charm of novelty, and the delicate pattern was a most attractive one. Johnny worked away harder than ever , and was beginning to hope he might yet complete his work, when a bright-faced little colored girl came in. She tied on an apron, and began beating eggs into a foam, adding a new clatter to the din made by Johnny's saw.

"Yes, 'm, splendid. Miss Lawton she's a-gwine to do lots o' nice things this summer--gwine to hev a lawn party next week out to her uncle's in the country for we uns."

"Who's we uns?" asked Johnny, teasingly.

"Why, her class--all o' we uns."

"No," said Phrony Jane, a little disdainfully; "Miss Lawton don't approve o' boys, I guess. Ain't got a single one in her class."

"Couldn't get one," retorted Johnny, going out.

"Come back, Johnny," called his mother, "and put away your patterns, and pick up your chips." She sat down to look over some blackberries, while Phrony Jane, finishing her egg-beating, and relieved from the disadvantage the noise had placed her under, resumed her talk as she set the table for tea.

"Must 'a ben mighty sca'ce times when der was famines 'round." She looked admiringly at a loaf of bread she was cutting into slices. "Not a mite o' bread 'n' butter, nor beefsteak, nor canned fruit, nor nothin'. Miss Lawton she tole us all 'bout how 'Lijah he went to a po'r woman, 'n' says he, 'Gi' me jus' a little speck o' bread,' 'n' says she, 'Bless yer heart, mas'r, I ain't got but jus' one handful o' co'n meal, 'n' jus' as soon as me 'n' de little chap eats dat up we's gwine to die, sho's you live!' But says he, 'Don't ye be skairt now, aunty; you go 'n' make some co'n-cake fer you uns, 'n' some fer me, 'n' you see ef tings don't hold out.' An' she did, 'n' every day dere was more co'n meal in de bar'l. Now you know, missus, dat was de Lord!"

Mrs. Dent assented.

"How d'you s'pose He done it?"

Phrony Jane looked as if she would like to know very much indeed.

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