CHAPTER III.
THE DEMON INTRODUCES HIMSELF.
I bade adieu to my kind host and hostess, promising to repeat my visit, if possible, at no distant date. Accordingly, after the lapse of a few months, I found myself again in the airy home of Solomon Pepper, and enjoyed for some three or four days his genial and instructive conversation. He strongly advised me to pay a visit to the Great Lake, which is far larger and more beautiful than Lake Sorell. I therefore set out immediately on horseback, and after a pleasant journey of about thirty miles through some very wild and rocky country, arrived at the romantic shore. The waters of this lake are clear as glass, not thick with mud like those of Lake Sorell. Its circumference is about one hundred miles. Three picturesque islands adorn its surface, but they are situated at long distances from each other. Near it are splendid bare and rocky mountains, of weird and fantastic appearance, but its shores in some places expand into extensive stony plains, and in others are clothed with forest down to the water's edge. It was a wild and charming scene, in the remembrance of which I should always find the greatest possible pleasure were it not for a great peril which befell me there.
My residence in this district lasted for nearly a month, and
