He was alone with the sun, the sky, and the Lake.

He could not surely have sailed into the ocean without knowing it?
He sat down, dipped his hand overboard and tasted the drops that adhered; the water was pure and sweet, warm from the summer sunshine.
There was not so much as a swift in the upper sky; nothing but slender filaments of white cloud.

No swallows glided over the surface of the water.

If there were fishes he could not see them through the waves, which were here much larger; sufficiently large, though the wind was light, to make his canoe rise and fall with their regular rolling.

To see fishes a calm surface is necessary, and, like other creatures, they haunt the shallows and the shore.