The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864

When he foretold the flood,
And stood repentance teaching,
They sneered, 'You radical,
We'll hear no ultra preaching!'

And when he drove the beasts and birds
Into the ark one morn,
They shouted, 'Odd enthusiast!'
And laughed with ringing scorn.

When he and all his house went in,
They gazed, and said, 'Erratic!'
'A pleasant voyage to you, Noah!
You canting, queer fanatic!'

SKETCHES OF AMERICAN LIFE AND SCENERY

V.—THE ADIRONDACS

This interesting mountain region embraces the triangular plateau lying between Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, Lake Ontario and the Mohawk. The name was formerly restricted to the central group containing the highest peaks, but is now applied to the various ranges traversing the northeastern counties of the State of New York. The loftiest points are found in the County of Essex and the neighboring corners of Franklin; but the surfaces of Clinton, St. Lawrence, Herkimer, Hamilton, Warren, and Washington are all diversified by the various branches of the same mountain system. The principal ranges have a general northeasterly and southwesterly direction, and are about six in number. They run nearly parallel with one another, and with the watercourses flowing into Lake Champlain, namely, Lake George and Putnam's Creek, the Boquet, Au Sable, and Saranac Rivers. Recent surveys made by, or under the direction of, Professor A. Guyot, will doubtless furnish us with more accurate information regarding ranges and measurements of heights than any we can now refer to. So far as we have been able to learn from the best authorities within our reach,[2 - New York Sate Gazetteer.] the situation and names of the most prominent ranges are as follows: The most southerly is that known as the Palmertown or Luzerne Mountains, and embraces the highlands of Lake George, terminating at Mount Defiance, on Lake Champlain. This range has also been called Black Mountain range and Tongue Mountains. The second range, the Kayaderosseras, ends in the high cliff overlooking Bulwagga Bay. The third, or Schroon range, terminates on Lake Champlain in the high promontory of Split Rock. It borders Schroon Lake, and its highest peak is Mount Pharaoh, nearly 4,000 feet above tidewater. The fourth, or Boquet range, finds its terminus at Perou Bay, and contains Dix Peak (5,200 feet), Nipple Top (4,900 feet), Raven Hill, and Mount Discovery. The fifth or Adirondac range (known also as Clinton or Au Sable) meets Lake Champlain in the rocks of Trembleau Point, and embraces the highest peaks of the system, namely, Mount Tahawus (Marcy), 5,379 feet, and Mounts Mc-Intire, McMartin, and San-da-no-na, all above 5,000 feet in elevation. The series nest succeeding on the northwest, does not consist of a single distinguishable range, but of a continuation of groups which may be considered as a sixth range, under the name of Chateaugay or Au Sable. Its highest points are Mount Seward (5,100 feet), and Whiteface, nearly 5,000 feet in height. We have also seen noticed as distinguishable a ridge still exterior to the last mentioned, as Chateaugay, i.e., the range of the St. Lawrence.

The above-named ranges are not always clearly defined, as cross spurs or single mountains sometimes occupy the entire space between two ridges, reducing the customary valley to a mere ravine. The usual uncertainty and redundancy of nomenclature common to mountain regions, adds to the difficulty of obtaining or conveying clear ideas of the local distribution of elevation and depression. On the northern slope, the three rivers, Boquet, Au Sable (with two branches, East and West), and Saranac, furnish to the traveller excellent guides for the arrangement of his conceptions, regarding the general face of the country. To the south, the same office is performed by the various branching headwaters of the Hudson.

These mountains are granitic, and the river bottoms have a light, sandy soil. The Au Sable well deserves its name, not only from the bar at its mouth, but also from the sand fields through which it chiefly flows. Steep, bare peaks, wild ravines, and stupendous precipices characterize the loftier ranges. The waterfalls are numerous and beautiful, and the lakes lovely beyond description. More than one hundred in number, they cluster round the higher groups of peaks, strings of glittering gems about the stately forms of these proud, dark-browed, Indian beauties—mirrors wherein they may gaze upon the softened outlines of their haughty heads, their wind-tossed raiment of spruce fir, pines, and birch.

In the lowest valleys the oak and chestnut are abundant, but as we leave the shores of Lake Champlain and ascend toward the west, the beech and basswood, butternut, elm, ash, and maple, hemlock and arbor vitæ, tamarack, white, black, and yellow pines, white and black birch, gradually disappear, until finally the forest growth of the higher portions of the loftier summits is composed almost exclusively of the various species of spruce or fir. The tamarack sometimes covers vast plains, and, with the long moss waving from its sombre branches, looks melancholy enough to be fancied a mourner over the ring of the axe felling noble pines, the crack of the rifle threatening extermination to the deer once so numerous, or the cautious tread of the fisherman under whose wasteful rapacity the trout are gradually disappearing. We have reason to be thankful that all are not yet gone—that some splendid specimens are left to tell the glorious tale of the primeval forest, that on the more secluded lake shores an occasional deer may yet be seen coming down to drink, and that in the shadier pools the wary and sagacious prince of fishes still disports himself and cleaves the crystal water with his jewelled wedge.

Berries of all sorts spring up on the cleared spots; the wide-spreading juniper, with its great prickly disks, covers the barer slopes; the willow herb, wild rose, clematis, violet, golden rod, aster, immortelle, arbutus, harebell, orchis, linnæa borealis, mitchella, dalibarda, wintergreen, ferns innumerable, and four species of running pine, all in due season, deck the waysides and forest depths.

The climate is intensely cold in winter, and in the summer cool upon the heights, but in the narrow sandy valleys the long days of June, July, and August are sometimes uncomfortably hot. The nights, however, are ordinarily cool. Going west through the middle of the region, from Westport to Saranac, a difference of several weeks in the progress of vegetation is perceptible. Long after the linnæa had ceased to bloom at Elizabethtown, we found its tender, fragrant, pink bells flushing a wooded bank near Lake Placid. Good grass grows upon the hillsides, and in the valleys are found excellent potatoes, oats, peas, beans, and buckwheat. The corn is small, but seems prolific, and occasional fields of flax, rye, barley, and even wheat, present a flourishing appearance. Lumber, charcoal, and iron ore of an excellent quality are, however, the present staples of this mountain region. Bears and panthers are found in some secluded localities, and the farmer still dreads the latter for his sheep. The wolves are said to kill more deer than the hunters. The otter and beaver are found among the watercourses, and the mink or sable is still the prey of the trapper. The horses are ordinarily of a small breed, but very strong and enduring.

The men are chiefly of the Vermont type, most of the original settlers having come from the neighboring State. The school house, court house, church, and town hall are hence regarded as among the necessary elements of life to the well-ordered citizen. Honest dealing, thrift, and cleanliness are the rule, and the farm houses are comfortable and well cared for. The men look intelligent, and the women are handsome, although, indeed, too many pale or sallow complexions give evidence of sedentary habits, and of the almost universal use of saleratus and hot bread [??]. The families of many farmers far in among the mountains rarely taste fresh meat, but subsist chiefly upon salt pork, fish, fresh or salted, as the season will permit, potatoes, wheat, rye, and Indian meal, with berries, dried apples, perhaps a few garden vegetables, plenty of good milk, and excellent butter. Eggs, chickens, and veal are luxuries occasionally to be enjoyed, and, should one of the family be a good shot, venison and partridge may appear upon the bill of fare. Bright flowers ornament the gardens, and gay creepers embower doors and windows. Along the more secluded roads are the log cabins of the charcoal burners, said cabins containing, if apparently nothing else, two or three healthy, chubby, pretty children, and a substantial cooking stove, of elaborate pattern, recently patented by some enterprising compatriot.

Among the most remarkable features of these mountains are the 'Passes,' answering to Gaps, Notches, and Cloves in other parts of the Union. They afford means for excellent roads from end to end of the mountain region, and are, in addition, eminently picturesque. The two most noteworthy are the Indian and Wilmington Passes; the first too rugged for the present to admit of a road; and the latter containing the beautiful Wilmington Fall. Many of the mountains have been burned over, and the bare, gaunt-limbed timber, and contorted folds of gray, glittering rock, afford a spectral contrast to the gentler contours of hills still clad in their natural verdure, bright or dark as deciduous or evergreen trees preponderate. The variety of form is endless; long ridges, high peaks, sharp or blunt, sudden clefts, great bare slides, flowing curves, convex or concave, serrated slopes crowned with dark spruce or jagged as the naked vertebræ of some enormous antediluvian monster, stimulate the curiosity and excite the imagination of the beholder. There is an essential difference in the character of the views obtained, whether looking from the south, or the east. In the former case, the eye, following the axes of the ranges, sees the mountains as a cross ridge of elevated peaks; and in the latter, where the sight strikes the ranges perpendicularly to their axes, one, or, at most, two ridges are all that can be seen from any single point.

This region may be approached from Lake Champlain by way of Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Port Henry, Westport, and Port Kent, the two latter places being the nearer to the higher peaks; or from the lake country in Hamilton County, by way of Racket and Long Lakes.

The night boat for Albany, June 27th, 1864, was crowded with passengers fleeing from pavements, summer heats, and stifling city air, to green fields, cool shadows of wooded glens, or life-giving breezes from mountain heights. True, there were some who, like Aunt Sarah Grundy, bitterly lamented the ample rooms and choice fare of their own establishments, and whose idea of a 'summer in the country' was limited to a couple of months at Saratoga or Newport, with a fresh toilette for each succeeding day; but even these knew that there were at both places green trees, limpid waters, whether of lake or ocean, and a wide horizon wherein to see sunsets, moonrises, and starlight. Aunt Sarah went to Newport; she found there fewer of such persons as she was pleased to designate as 'rabble,' and the soft, warm fogs were exactly the summer atmosphere for a complexion too delicate to be exposed to the fervent blaze of a July sun.

But the majority were not of Aunt Sarah's stamp. They were men, wearied with nine months' steady work, eager for country sports, for the freedom of God's own workhouse, where labor and bad air and cramped positions need not be synonymous; or women, glad to escape the routine of housekeeping, the daily contest with Bridget or Katrine, with Jean, Williams, or Priscilla. There were young girls, with round hats and thick boots, anxious to substitute grassy lanes or rocky hillsides for the flagstones of avenues; lads, to whom climbing of fruit trees and rowing boats were pleasant reminiscences of some foregone year; and finally, children, who longed for change, and whose little frames needed all the oxygen and exercise their anxious parents could procure for them.

Such, doubtless, was a large portion of the precious freight of our 'floating palace,' whose magnificence proved to us rather of the Dead-Sea-apple sort, as we had arrived upon the scene of action too late to procure comfortable quarters for the night, and, in addition, soon after daybreak found ourselves aground within sight of Albany, and with no prospect of release until after the departure of the train for Whitehall. At a few moments past seven, we heard the final whistle, and knew that our journey's end was now postponed some four and twenty hours. We afterward learned that by taking the boat to Troy we would have run less risk of delay, as the Whitehall and Rutland train usually awaits the arrival of said boat. At nine o'clock we reached Albany, and one of our number spent a dreary day, battling with headache and the ennui of a little four year old, who could extract no amusement from the unsuggestive walls of a hotel parlor. About five in the afternoon we left for Whitehall, where we purposed passing the night. This movement did not one whit expedite the completion of our journey, but offered a change of place, and an additional hour of rest in the morning, as the lake-boat train from Whitehall was the same that left Albany shortly after seven.

We found Whitehall a homely little town, in a picturesque situation, on the side of a steep hill, past which winds the canal, and under which thundered the train that on the following morning bore us to the lake, where the pleasant steamboat 'United States' awaited her daily cargo. The upper portion of Lake Champlain is very narrow, and the channel devious; the shores are sometimes marshy, sometimes rocky, and the bordering hills have softly swelling outlines. Our day was hazy, and the Green Mountains of Vermont seemed floating in some species of celestial atmosphere suddenly descended upon that fair State. We passed the Narrows (a singular, rocky cleft, through which flows the lake), and soon after came to Ticonderoga, with its ruined fort and environing hills.

After leaving Crown Point, the lake becomes much wider, and at Port Henry spreads out into a noble expanse of water. Behind Port Henry, the Adirondac peaks already begin to form a towering background. Westport, however, has a still more beautiful situation. The lake there is very broad, the sloping shores are wooded, the highest peaks of the Green Mountains are visible to the east and northeast, and the Adirondacs rise, tier after tier, toward the west.

On the boat were wounded soldiers going to their homes. Poor fellows! They had left their ploughs and their native hills, to find wounds and fevers in Virginia. When one looked upon the tranquil lake and halo-crowned mountains, it seemed almost impossible that the passions of evil men should have power to draw even that placid region into the vortex, and hurl back its denizens scarred and scathed, to suffer amid its beauty. And yet were these men the very marrow and kernel of the landscape, the defenders of the soil, the patriots who were willing to give themselves that their country might remain one and undivided, that the 'home of the brave' might indeed be the 'land of the free.'

At Westport we left the boat, and found the stage to Elizabethtown, a buckboard, already crowded with passengers. An inn close at hand furnished us the only covered wagon we chanced to see during our ten weeks' sojourn among the Adirondacs. The drive to Elizabethtown (eight miles) was hot and dusty, for we faced the western sun, and the long summer drought was just then commencing to make itself felt. Nevertheless, there was beauty enough by the wayside to make one forget such minor physical annoyances. As the road rose over the first hills, the views back, over the lake and toward those hazy, dreamy-looking Vermont mountains, seemed a leaf from some ancient romance, wherein faultless knights errant sought peerless lady loves with golden locks flowing to their tiny feet, and the dragons were all on the outside, dwellers in dark caverns and noisome dens. In our day, I fear, we have not improved the matter, for the dark caverns seem to have passed within, and the dragons have been adopted as familiars.

By and by, on some arid spots, appeared the low, spreading juniper, which we had previously known only as the garden pet of an enthusiastic tree fancier. And thus, perhaps, the virtues which here we cultivate by unceasing care and watchfulness, will, when we are translated to some wider sphere, nearer to the Creator of all, burst upon us as simple, natural gifts to the higher and freer intelligences native to that sphere.

Raven Hill is the highest point between Westport and Elizabethtown. It is a beautifully formed conical hill, rising some twenty-one hundred feet above the sea level, and contributing the cliffs on the northern side of the 'Pass,' through which leads the road into the valley of the Boquet, that vale known formerly as the 'The Pleasant Valley,' in which was Betseytown, now dignified into Elizabethtown. Does an increase in civilization and refinement indeed destroy familiarity, render us more strange one to another, even, through much complexity, to our own selves? The southern side of the Pass is formed by the slope of the 'Green Mountain,' once so called from its beautiful verdure, now, alas! burnt over, bristling with dead trees and bare rocks, and green only by reason of weeds, brambles, and a bushy growth of saplings. The view, descending from the summit of the Pass into the Pleasant Valley, is charming. The Boquet runs through green meadows and cultivated fields, while round it rise lofty mountains—the 'Giant of the Valley' (alias 'Great Dome' or 'Bald Peak'), being especially remarkable, with its summits, green or bare, round or peaked, glittering with white scars of ancient slides. To the west lies the Keene Pass, a steep, rocky gateway to the Au Sable River and the wonders beyond. This view of the descent into the Pleasant Valley is even more striking from a road passing over the hills some five miles south of Elizabethtown. The vale is narrower, the point of view higher, and the opposite mountains nearer and more lofty. The Giant of the Valley rises directly in the west, and Dix's Peak closes the vista to the south. On a semi-hazy afternoon, with the sunlight streaming through in broad pathways of quivering glory, it would be difficult to imagine a more enchanting scene.

There are in Elizabethtown two inns,[3 - During the past season, the Mansion House, on the Plain, was not opened until near the close Of the summer. We understand it is to be henceforth a permanent 'institution.'] one down by the stream, a branch of the Boquet, and the other up on the 'Plain,' near the court house. The latter has decidedly the advantage in situation. Both are owned by the same landlord, and are well kept. We arrived in the midst of court week, and found every place filled with lawyers, clients, witnesses, and even, behind the bars of the brick jail, we could see the prisoners, more fortunate than their city compeers, in that they breathed pure air, and could look out upon the everlasting hills, solemn preachers of the might and the rights, as well as the mercy of their Creator.

From two to three miles from the Valley House is the top of Raven Hill, seemingly a watchtower on the outskirts of the citadel of the Adirondacs. The ascent is easy, and the view panoramic, embracing Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains, Burlington and Westport, the bare, craggy hills to the north, the higher ranges to the west, with the abrupt precipices of the 'Keene Pass' and the lofty 'Dome' and 'Bald Mountain,' Dix's Peak to the south, a clear lake known as 'Black Pond' among the hills toward Moriah, and at the base the Pleasant Valley with the winding Boquet River.

Near the lower hotel is Wood Mountain, about half as high as Raven Hill, and offering a view somewhat similar, although of course not so extended. The distance to the top is but little over a mile, and the pathway, although somewhat steep, is very good.

A visit to the iron mines and works at Moriah can readily be made from Elizabethtown. The distance is from twelve to fourteen miles. One of the mines is quite picturesque, being cut into the solid rock, under a roof supported by great columns of the valuable ore. The workmen, with their picks and barrows, passing to and fro, as seen from the top of the excavation, look like German pictures of tiny gnomes and elves delving for precious minerals. The yield from the ore is about eighty per cent., and of very superior quality. The return road passes down the hill, whence is the splendid view of the 'Valley' before mentioned.

A delightful excursion can also be made to 'Split Rock,' about nine miles up the valley of the Boquet. The little river there, in two separate falls, makes its way through a rocky cleft. The basins of the upper, and the singularly winding chasm of the lower fall, are especially worthy of observation. At Split Rock we first made any extensive acquaintance with a costume which threatens to be immensely popular among the Adirondacs, namely, the Bloomer, and in the agility displayed by some of its fair wearers we beheld the results likely to spring from its adoption as a mountain walking dress. Our private observation was, that moderately full, short skirts, without hoop of course, terminating a little distance above the ankle, and worn with clocked or striped woollen stockings, were more graceful than a somewhat shorter and scantier skirt, with the pantalette extending down to the foot. The former seems really à la paysanne, while the latter, in addition to some want of grace, suggests Bloomer, and the many absurdities which have been connected with that name. It is a great pity that a sensible and healthful change in walking attire should have been caricatured by its own advocates, and thus rendered too conspicuous to be agreeable to many who would otherwise have adopted it in some modified and reasonable form.

Near New Russia, about five miles from Elizabethtown, is a brook flowing among moss-covered stones and rocks, overhung by giant trees of the original forest; and just out of Elizabethtown is a glen, through which pours a pretty stream, making pleasant little cascades under the shadow of a less aged wood, and within a bordering of beautiful ferns, running pines, and bright forest blossoms. We should also not neglect to mention Cobble Hill, a bold pile of rocks, rising directly out of the plain on which a portion of the town is situated.

But we had heard of the 'Walled Rocks of the Au Sable,' and Elsie and I could not rest until our own eyes had witnessed that they were worthy of their reputation. We left Elizabethtown at half past six in the morning, our team a fast pair of ponies, belonging to our landlord. The previous days had been warm and obstinately hazy, but for that especial occasion the atmosphere cooled and cleared, and lent us some fine views back toward the Giant of the Valley and the Keene Pass. The first ten miles of road were excellent. We then crossed a little stream known as Trout Brook, a tributary of the Boquet, and, by a somewhat rough and stony way, began to ascend the high land separating the Boquet from the Au Sable. This ridge includes the 'Poke a Moonshine' Mountain, a rude pile of rocks, burnt over, and with perpendicular precipices of some three or four hundred feet, facing the road which winds along the bottom of the declivity. This cleft thus becomes another 'Pass,' and, with the huge rocks fallen at its base, offers a wild and rather dreary scene. To the north, near the foot of the mountain, are two ponds, Butternut and Auger, which wind fantastically in and out among the hills. As we descended the ridge, we looked toward Canada, far away over rolling plains and hillocks, and soon after reached the sandy stretch of the basin of the Au Sable, in the midst of which is Keeneville, twenty-two miles from Elizabethtown.

By the wayside we passed a solitary grave, the mound and headstone in a patch of corn and potatoes. Was the unknown occupant some dear one whom the dwellers in the humble cabin near by were unwilling to send far away from daily remembrance, or were they too poor to seek the shelter of the common graveyard, or, again, had the buriers of that dead one followed to the 'land of promise,' or departed to some other far country, leaving this grave to the care or rather carelessness of stranger hands, and did the snowy headstone recall no memory of past love to the laborer who ploughed his furrow near that mound, or to the children who played around it?

Ah! thus, not only in the mystical caverns of beauty, poetry, and romance are hidden the graves of buried hopes, but even amid the corn and potatoes of daily life rise the ghostly head and foot stones of aspirations dead and put away out of sight, dead in the body, in daily act, but living yet in spirit, and influencing the commonplace facts to which they have yielded the field, permeating the everyday routine with the ennobling power of lofty desires, and keeping the wayworn traveller from sinking into the slough of materialism or the quicksands of utter weariness. The man who in his youth dreamed of elevating his kind by a noble employment of the gifts of genius, may find that genius apparently useless, a hindrance even to prosperity, but he can nevertheless sow along his way seeds of beauty not lost upon the thinking beings about him, and bearing fruit perhaps in some future generation. The woman whose reveries have pictured her a Joan of Arc, leading her country's armies to victory, and finally yielding her life in the good cause, may sew for sanitary commissions, and, nursing in some hospital, dropping medicines, making soups and teas, die of some deadly fever, a willing sacrifice to her country.

Later in the day we saw the corn and potatoes growing up to the very verge of an exquisite waterfall, reckless strength and glorious poetry side by side with patient utility and humble prose. This union seemed not strange and unnatural, as did that of the solitary grave with the active labor of supplying the living with daily food, the grave the more lonely that the living with their material wants encircled it so closely.

Keeseville is a manufacturing town, situated upon the Au Sable, which here breaks through a layer of Potsdam sandstone, and presents a series of most interesting and wonderful falls and chasms. About a mile below the village is the first fall of eighty feet. The river has here a large body of water, and falls in fan shape over a rapid descent of steps. It takes a sharp turn, so that without crossing the stream, a fine view can be obtained of the dancing, glittering sheet of foam. About half a mile below is Birmingham, another manufacturing town, which has done its best, but without entire success, to destroy the beauty of the second fall, immediately below the bridge, said bridge being erected upon natural piers at the sides and in the centre of the stream.

Here begins a chasm which continues for the distance of about a mile and a half. Wonderfully grand are these Walled Rocks of the Au Sable, through, which rushes the river, pent up between literally perpendicular walls, a hundred or more feet in height, and from eleven to sixty or eighty feet apart, generally from twelve to fourteen. The water sometimes rushes smoothly and deeply below, and sometimes falls over obstructions, roaring, and tumbling, and foaming. The turns in the river are very sudden, and there are great cracks and gullies extending from top to base, pillars of rock standing alone or leaning against their companions. Occasionally, looking down one of these clefts, one sees nothing but the rock walls with a foaming, rapid rushing below. At one of these most remarkable points, a rude stairway has been constructed, by which the traveller can descend to the bottom, and, standing by the water's edge, look up to the top of this singular chasm. The walls finally lower, and the river flows out into a broad basin, whence it ere long finds its way into Lake Champlain. The banks are wooded with pines, hemlocks, spruce, arbor vitaæ, beech, birch, and basswood, and the ground is covered with ferns, harebells, arbutus, linnæa, mitchella, blue lobelia, and other wild flowers.

There is an excellent inn, the Adirondac House, in Keeseville. Our attentive host told us of Professor Agassiz, and the fiery nature of his speculations regarding the probable history of the sandstone, whose strata, laid as at Trenton Falls, horizontally, layer above layer, add such interest and beauty to the stupendous walls, with their unseen, water-covered depths below, and their graceful wreaths of arbor vittæ nodding and swaying above.

He also told us a tale of the war of 1812, when a bridge, known as the 'High Bridge,' crossed the Au Sable at the narrowest point, some eleven feet in width. A rumor was abroad that the British were about to march up from Plattsburg; whereupon the bridge, consisting of three beams, each nine inches wide, was stripped of its planking. A gentleman had left his home in the morning, and, ignorant of the fate of the bridge, returned quite late at night. Urging his steed forward, it refused to cross the bridge, and not until after repeated castigation would it make the attempt. The crossing was safely accomplished, and the rider suspected nothing amiss until he reached home and was asked how he had come. 'By the High Bridge,' was his reply; whereupon he was informed that the planking had been torn away, and he must have crossed upon a string piece nine inches wide, hanging some hundred feet above the surface of the water. His sensations may be imagined.

A venturesome expedition had also been essayed by our host, in the shape of a voyage down the chasm in a boat. We presume he went at high water, when the rapids would be less dangerous.

Keeseville is only four miles from Port Kent, a steamboat landing on Lake Champlain nearly opposite Burlington, and the Adirondacs may then be approached in several ways. A stage runs three times per week from Keeseville through Elizabethtown and Schroon River to Schroon Lake. North Elba and Lake Placid are some thirty-six miles distant, and may be reached by a good road through the Wilmington Pass. Saranac is somewhat farther, but readily accessible. Strong wagons and good teams are everywhere to be found, and the only recommendation we here think needful to make to the traveller is to have a good umbrella, a thick shawl or overcoat, and as little other baggage as he or she can possibly manage to find sufficient. Trunks are sadly in the way, and carpet bags or valises the best forms for stowage under seats or among feet.

LOIS PEARL BERKELEY

The fiery July noon was blazing over the unsheltered depot platform, where everybody was in the agony of trying to compress half an hour's work into the fifteen minutes' stop of the long express train. The day was so hot that even the group of idlers which usually formed the still life of the picture was out of sight on the shady side of the buildings. Hackmen bustled noisily about; baggage masters were busier and crosser than ever; there was the usual mêlée of leave-takings and greetings. With the choking dust and scalding glare of the sun, the whole scene might have been an anteroom to Tophet.

From the car window, Clement Moore, brown, hollow-cheeked, and clad in army blue, looked out with weary eyes on all the confusion. Half asleep in the parching heat, visions of cool, green forest depths, and endless ripple of leaves, of the ceaseless wash and sway of salt tides, drifted across his brain, and rapt him out of the sick, comfortless present. But they vanished like a flash with the sudden cessation of motion, and the reality of his surroundings came back with a great shock. Captain George, coming in five minutes after with a glass of iced lemonade in one hand and a half dozen letters in the other, found necessary so much of cheer and comfort as lay in—

'Keep courage, Clement, old fellow, it's only a few hours longer now.'

And then he fell to reading his epistles, testifying his disapprobation of their contents presently by sundry grunts, ending finally in a 'Confound it!' given explosively and an explanation:

'Too bad, Moore! Here am I taking you home to get well in peace and quiet, and Ellen has filled the house up with half a dozen girls, more or less. Writes me to come home and be 'made a lion of;' as sensible as most women!' And the grumble subsided. He broke out again shortly: 'Louise Meller—Lois Berkeley—Susy—' the other names were drowned in the rattle of the starting train. The captain finished his letters, and Clement Moore took up his broken dreams, but this time with a new element.

Lois Berkeley. With the name came back a fortnight of the last summer—perfect bright days, far-off skies filled with drifting fleets of sunny vapor, summer green piled deep over the land, the gurgle of falling waters, the shimmer of near grain fields, deep-hued flowers glowing in the garden borders, all the prodigality of splendor that July pours over the world. And floating through these memories, scarce recognized, but giving hue and tone to them like a far-off, half-heard strain of music—a woman's presence. By some fine, subtile harmony, such as spirits recognize, all the summer glow and depth of color, as it came back to him, came only as part of an exquisite clothing and setting for a slender figure and dark face. All the dainty adaptations of nature were but an expression, in a rude, material way, for those elegances and fitnesses which surrounded her, and which were as natural to her very existence as to the birds and flowers. Only a fortnight, and in that fortnight every look and word of hers, every detail of dress, even to the texture of the garments she wore, were indelibly fixed in his memory. She was so daintily neat in everything, nothing soiled or coarse ever came near her. Careless, too, he thought, remembering how, coming through the parlor in the evening dusk, he had entangled himself in the costly crape shawl left trailing across a chair, of the gloves he had picked up fluttering with the leaves on the veranda, and the handkerchiefs always lying about. Perhaps Clement Moore was over critical in his fancies about ladies' dresses, and felt that inner perfect cleanliness and refinement worked itself out in such little matters as the material and color and fit of garments, and all the trifles of the toilet. A soiled or rumpled article of attire showed a dangerous lack of something that should make up the womanly character. He had not reduced all these unreasonable men's notions to a system by which to measure femininity. He did not even know he had them. An excessive constitutional refinement and keenness of perception made him involuntarily look for such scrupulous delicacy as belonging of course to every woman he was thrown in contact with. He had always been disappointed, at first with a feeling of half disgust with himself and others, that his dreams were so different from the reality. It drove him apart from the sex, and gained him the reputation of being shy or ill natured. After finding that disappointments repeated themselves, he accepted them as the natural order of events, let his fancies go as the beau ideal that he was to seek for through life, and became the polished, unimpressible man of society.