Part 30 (2/2)
_Alfred B. Street._
Resuming our march through Indian Pa.s.s, under old Wall-Face Mountain, we reached a comfortable farmhouse at sunset, near North Elba, known by the name of Scott's. The next morning we visited John Brown's house and grave by the old rock, and read the beautiful inscription, ”Bury me by the Old Rock, where I used to sit and read the word of G.o.d.”
From this point we went to Lake Placid, engaged a lad to row us across the lake--some of our party had gone on before--and strapped our knapsacks for another mountain climb. We were fortunate in having a lovely day, and from its sparkling glacier-worn summit we could look back on all the mountains of our pleasant journey, and far away across Lake Champlain to Mount Mansfield and Camel's Hump of the Green Mountains, and farther still to the faint outlines of Mount Was.h.i.+ngton. We reached Wilmington that night, drove the next morning to Ausable Forks, and took the cars for Plattsburgh. The ten days'
trip was finished, and at this late hour I heartily thank the Tahawas Club of Plattsburgh for taking me under their generous care and guidance. We took Phelps, our guide, back with us to Plattsburgh. When he reached the ”Forks,” and saw the cars for the first time in his life, he stooped down and, examining the track, said, ”What tarnal little wheels.” I suppose he concluded that if the ordinary cart had two large wheels, that real car wheels would resemble the Rings of Saturn. He saw much to amuse and interest him during his short stay in Plattsburgh, but after all he thought it was rather lonesome, and gladly returned to his lakes and mountains, where he slept in peace, with the occasional intrusion of a ”Bar” or a ”Painter.” He knew the region about Tahawas as an engineer knows his engine, or as a Greek professor knows the pages of his lexicon. He had lived so closely with nature that he seemed to understand her gentlest whispers, and he had more genuine poetry in his soul than many a man who chains weak ideas in tangled metre.
Lake Avalanche with rocky wall And Henderson's dark-wooded sh.o.r.e, Your echoes linger still and call Unto my soul forevermore.
_Wallace Bruce_.
[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN HEAD.]
Since that first delightful trip I have visited the Adirondacks many times, and I hope this summer to repeat the excursion. To me Tahawas is the grand centre. It remains unchanged. In fact, the route I have here traced is the same to-day as then. Even the rude camps are located in the same places, with the exception that the trail has been shortened over Tahawas, and a camp established on Skylight. With good guides the route is not difficult for ladies in good health,--say sufficient health to endure half a day's shopping. Persons contemplating the mountain trip need blankets, a knapsack, and a rubber cloth or overcoat; food can be procured at the hotels or farm houses.
The old English ballads have all the sparkle, the energy and the rhythm of our mountain streams, but Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Bunyan are the crystal lakes from which flow the river, ay, the Hudson of our language.
_Wallace Bruce_.
In this hasty sketch I have had little s.p.a.ce to indulge in picture-painting. I pa.s.sed Bridal-Veil Fall without a reference. I was tempted to loiter on the banks of the Feld-spar and the bright Opalescent, but I pa.s.sed by without even picking a pebble from the clear basins of its sparkling cascades. I pa.s.sed the ”tear of the clouds,” four thousand feet above the tide--that fountain of the Hudson nearest to the sky, without being beguiled into poetry. I have not ventured upon a description of a sunrise view from the summit of Tahawas, of the magic effect of light above clouds that clothe the surrounding peaks in garments wrought, it seems, of softest wool, until mist and vapor dissolve in roseate colors, and the landscape lies before us like an open book, which many glad eyes have looked upon again and again. I have left it for your guides to tell you, by roaring camp-fires, long stories of adventure in trapping and hunting, of wondrous fishes that grow longer and heavier every season, although captured and broiled many and many a year ago--trout and pickerel literally pickled in fiction, served and re-served in the piquant sauce of mountain vocabulary. In brief, I have kept my imagination and enthusiasm under strict control. But, after all, the Adirondacks are a wonderland, and we, who dwell in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, are happy in having this great park of Nature's making at our very doors.
It has charms alike for the hunter, the angler, the artist, the writer, and the scientist. Let us rejoice, therefore, that the State of New York is waking at last to the fact, that these northern mountains were intended by nature to be something more than lumber ranches, to be despoiled by the axe, and finally revert to the State for ”taxes” in the shape of bare and desolate wastes. Nor can the most practical legislator charge those, who wish to preserve the Adirondack woods, with idle sentiment; as it is now an established scientific fact that the rainfall of a country is largely dependent upon its forest land. If the water supply of the north were cut off, to any perceptible degree, the Hudson, during the months of July and August, would be a mere sluice of salt water from New York to Albany; and the northern ca.n.a.ls, dependent on this supply, would become empty and useless ditches. Our age is intensely practical, but we are fortunate in this, that so far as the preservation of the Adirondacks is concerned, utility, common sense, and the appreciation of the beautiful are inseparably blended.
Wild umbrage far around me clings To breezy knoll and hushed ravine, And o'er each rocky headland flings Its mantle of refres.h.i.+ng green.
_Henry T. Tuckerman_.
To those persons who do not desire long mountain jaunts, who simply need some quiet place for rest and recuperation, I would suggest this: Select some place near the base of these cl.u.s.tered mountains, like the tasty Adirondack Lodge at Clear Pond, only seven miles from the summit of Tahawas, or Beede's pleasant hotel, high and dry above Keene Flats, near to the Ausable Ponds, or some pleasant hotel or quiet farm-house in the more open country near Lake Placid and the Saranacs. But I prophesy that the spirit of adventure will come with increased strength, and men and women alike will be found wandering off on long excursions, sitting about great camp-fires, ay, listening like children to tales which have not gathered truth with age. If you have control of your time you will find no pleasanter months than July, August and September, and when you return to your firesides with new vigor to fight the battle of life, you will feel, I think, like thanking the writer for having advised you to go thither.
To shut up a glen or a waterfall for one man's exclusive enjoying; to fence out a genial eye from any corner of the earth which nature has lovingly touched; to lock up trees and glades shady paths and haunts along rivulets, would be an embezzlement by one man of G.o.d's gifts to all.
_N. P. Willis._
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