Part 30 (1/2)
The rills That feed thee rise among the storied rocks Where Freedom built her battle-tower.
_William Wallace._
After reaching the southern portion of the lake, a trail of a mile and a quarter leads to the Upper Ausable--the gem of the Adirondacks. This lake, over two thousand feet above the tide, is surrounded on all sides by lofty mountains. Our camp was on the eastern sh.o.r.e, and I can never forget the sunset view, as rosy tints lit up old Skylight, the Haystack and the Gothics; nor can I ever forget the evening songs from a camp-fire across the lake, or the ”bear story” told by Phelps, a tale never really finished, but made cla.s.sic and immortal by Stoddard, in his spicy and reliable handbook to the North Woods.
The next morning we rowed across the lake and took the Bartlett trail, ascending Haystack, some five thousand feet high, just to get an appet.i.te for dinner; our guide encouraging us on the way by saying that there never had been more than twenty people before ”on that air peak.” In fact, there was no trail, and in some places it was so steep that we were compelled to go up on all fours; or as Scott puts it more elegantly in the ”Lady of the Lake”:
”The foot was fain a.s.sistance from the hand to gain.”
The view from the summit well repaid the toil. We saw Slide Mountain, near by to the north, and Whiteface far beyond, perhaps twenty-five miles distant; northeast, the Gothics; east, Saw-teeth, Mt. Colvin, Mt. Dix, and the lakes of the Ausable. To the southeast, Skylight; northwest, Tahawas, still foolishly styled on some of our maps, Mt. Marcy. The descent of Haystack was as easy as Virgil's famous ”Descensus Averni.” We went down in just twenty minutes. The one that reached the bottom first simply possessed better adaptation for rolling.
Eagles still claim the loftiest heights: from there They scan with solemn eyes the scenes below-- The river and the hills which shall endure While man's frail generations come and go.
_E. A. Lente._
One mile from the foot of Haystack brought us to Panther Gorge Camp, appropriately named, one of the wildest spots in the Adirondacks. We remained there that night and slept soundly, although a dozen of us were packed so closely in one small camp that no individual could turn over without disarranging the whole ma.s.s. Caliban and Trinculo were not more neighborly, and Sebastian, even sober, would have been fully justified in taking us for ”a rare monster” with twenty legs.
The next morning we ascended Tahawas, but saw nothing save whirling clouds on its summit. Twice since then we have had better fortune, and looked down from this mountain peak, five thousand three hundred and forty-four feet above the sea, upon the loveliest mountain landscape that the sun ever shone upon. We went down the western slope of Tahawas, through a driving rain, to Camp Colden, where, with clothes hung up to dry, we looked like a party of New Zealanders preparing dinner, hungry enough, too, to make an orthodox meal of each other.
The next day the weather cleared up, and we made a trip of two miles over a rough mountain trail to Lake Avalanche, whose rocky and precipitous walls form a fit christening bowl, or baptistery-font for the infant Hudson.
Returning to Camp Colden and resuming our western march, two miles brought us to Calamity Pond, where a lone monument marks the spot of David Henderson's death, by the accidental discharge of a pistol. Five miles from this point brought us to the ”Deserted Village,” or the Upper Adirondack Iron Works, with houses and furnaces abandoned, and rapidly falling into decay. Here we found a cheery fireside and cordial welcome.
All the sad story of forest and flower, All the red glory of sunsetting hour, Comes till I seem to lie lapped in bright dreams Lulled by the lullaby murmur of streams.
_James Kennedy._
Had I time to picture this level, gra.s.s-grown street, with ten or fifteen square box-looking houses, windowless, empty and desolate; a school-house with its long vacation of twenty-three years; a bank with heavy shutters and ponderous locks, whose floor, Time, the universal burglar, had undermined; two large furnaces with great rusty wheels, whose occupation was gone forever; a thousand tons of charcoal, untouched for a quarter of a century; thousands of bricks waiting for a builder; a real haunted house, whose flapping clap-boards contain more spirits than the Black Forests of Germany--a village so utterly desolate, that it has not even the vestige of a graveyard--if I could picture to you this village, as it appeared to me that weird midnight, lying so quiet,
”under the light of the solemn moon,”
you would realize as I did then, that truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and that Goldsmith in _his_ ”Deserted Village” had not overdrawn the description of desolate Auburn.
By special request, we were permitted to sleep that night in the Haunted House and no doubt listened to the first crackling that the old fire-place had known for years. Many bedsteads in the old building were still standing, so we only needed bedding from the hotel to make us comfortable. As we went to sleep we expressed a wish to be interviewed in the still hours of the night by any ghosts or spirits who might happen to like our company; but the spirits must have been absent on a visit that evening, for we slept undisturbed until the old bell, suspended in a tree, rang out the cheery notes of ”trout and pickerel.” We understand that the Haunted House from that night lost its old-time reputation, and is now frequently brought into requisition as an ”Annex,” whenever the hotel or ”Club House,” as it is now called, happens to be full. The ”Deserted Village” is rich in natural beauty. Lakes Henderson and Sanford are near at hand, and the lovely Preston Ponds are only five miles distant.
Stately and awful was the form of Tahawas, the old scarred warrior king of the mountains, and yet it owns pines that sing like the sea, brooks that warble like the robin, and flowers that scent the air like the orange-blossoms of Italy.