![]() They clung to the frail support till the boy, impatient at the situation, crossed the awful chasm, and tried to detach a portion of the floating deck. Only three were left, crowded on the bow above the mass of wreckage-the mate, the wheelsman and a sailor, a boy of nineteen. One by one the crew were overcome and perished in the freezing water. The rigging fell over the side, forming a network through which the water seethed and foamed, dashing the broken deck high above the prostrate spars only to fall in the black gulf below. The great waves pounded against her sides with terrific blows. This time it caught the ship swung stern shoreward and bow out, trailing anchor, and drifting slowly toward the sand bar. They dropped their anchor but it fouled they drew it and tried again. The sky was thick with blinding snow and she began to drift at the mercy of the wind. Suddenly the wind shifted to the northwest. The schooner tried to gain the lee of the Manitous, and at the same time shun the sand reefs of Sleeping Bear, where many a good ship has laid her bones. The wind blew in a gale from the southwest, lasing the water into foam, the great rollers coming in with almost two hundred miles of unbroken sweep. “It was a night in late November in 1880. “I never sit here as we do this evening, and looking out over the great sand dunes of Sleeping Bear, but I think of one wild Autumn day when the schooner Phelps went ashore on the bar below She clasped her slender hands across her knees, and looked far out on the misty lake, while a thoughtful light came into her pretty eyes. A bit of romance in this dull work-a-day world will indeed be refreshing.” Tell me a story of your Traverse knights. I could tell you stories of wild storms, of wreck and ruin,–yes of heroic deeds such as you read in books, and that thrill your soul with thoughts of knightly emprise till you sigh for the olden days when men were indeed men, not knowing that there are heroes still whom we meet in our daily walks, only our eyes are dim and we do not know them for the knightly souls they are.” “But it is not always afternoon,” she said, “nor are the days all halcyon summer days. This must be the true lotos land, –the land of dreams-the land ‘where it is always afternoon.’ I could stay here forever.” “I do not wonder you love your “home by the silver sea’, so well:” I said. Thriving farms dotted the shores or hid behind the gaps in the forest walls cut by stalwart arms of the pioneers who here have hewn out for themselves happy homes.įrom out Glen Lake issued Crystal River, rightly named, slipping away to the beach of yellow sand on the shores of old Michigan, stopping to coil itself into many shining loops, lingering under arches of fragrant cedar, where in the dim green light, in dark pools of ice cold water, speckled trout hide under ferny banks-out of the shadow into the sun, and then back into the shadows again,–under rustic bridges, past the old red grist mill and so down to the shining sands where the waves lap the shore with musical murmur.įrom our lofty perch we looked down on the tops of a ragged fringe of scrub pines and oaks that lay between the sand of the beach and the base of Prospect Hill. To the southeast Glen Lake, a mighty mirror set in forest crowned hills, and two smaller lakes reflected as faithfully blue of sky and green of wooded slopes. Far out, dim murky lines lying against the sky told of other boats bearing their loads of gay summer travelers to the great city “at the head” or to the pleasant resorts beyond the northern horizon. Two great propellers with black plumes streaming from their smoke stacks, saluted each other with short, hoarse whistles, as they passed between the islands and the mainland. Clear and distinct, near at hand, or so far away as to be only ghostly outlines, were the white sails of numerous barks bound up or down. Hitherward lie the great waterways for all the craft that seek the Straits from the westward, or the Lake Michigan ports and Chicago from the eastward. Ten miles or more out but looking as if within rifle shot, lay the Manitous, like emeralds in a crystal setting. Before us lay Lake Michigan, its wide blue expanse stretching on and out as far as the eye could see, till it merged into sky at the horizon line, behind which the sun, a glowing ball of molten fire had just dropped, leaving all the west a golden sea. I think in all this Grand Traverse region there is perhaps no finer view than that from Prospect Hill. We were sitting on Prospect Hill watching the sun go down, –my friend, the school teacher, and I.
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