SECRETARY'S REPORT. 235 



sen ting, too, many views of exceeding beauty, and even grandeur,) 

 ■will compare favorably with the better cLiss of roads throughout the 

 State. The larger portion of the road is, however, comparatively 

 level, and following as it does the Sandy River, the fertility of 

 whose intervales have well nigh passed into a proverb, the whole 

 route is one highly attractive to the traveller who delights in varied 

 scenery and agricultural beauty. 



Phillips, Oct. 12, 1859. 



Dear Sir : In compliance with your request, I will furnish a 

 brief description of the land over which we passed in our tramp to 

 Canada line. 



Immediately after leaving you at Rangely, we entered the woods 

 on the land of Joseph H. Ellis. For the first five miles, we followed 

 an old log road leading across a tract of tolerably good farming land, 

 the growth consisting of maple, beech, birch and a mixture of spruce. 

 The soil is of a brown color, deep and rich, although portions of it 

 are somewhat rocky. In traveling the next five miles, we passed 

 over a variety of soils; the first consisting of upland well adapted to 

 tillage purposes ; next, a small tract of swamp or wet meadow, well 

 covered with spruce and cedar timber. From this meadow, we 

 passed a gradual rise for a mile and a half, over a tract of as good 

 land for f earning, as can be found in Franklin county. This land 

 slopes gradually towards the south — growth hard wood — soil rich 

 and deep, and nearly free from stones. On the north side of this 

 hill, sloping towards the Kennebago Lake, the land is not so good, 

 it being somewhat broken and rocky. 



Here, being warned by approaching darkness, and feeling some- 

 what weary, we caught some fine trout from the lake, served our 

 evening meal, and camped for the night on the shore of the Kenne- 

 bago. 



The following morning we constructed a raft, on which we crossed 

 the foot of the Lake, and came upon some of the finest interval land 

 I have ever seen. Thence we traveled in a northerly direction along 

 this interval until we struck the Lake of the Hills ; we crossed the 

 foot of this Lake and traveled along its shore about two miles. All 

 the land bordering on these lakes and streams is of the very best 

 quality — the soil black and rich — and we could easily thrust a cane 



