44 Eruption of Long Lake and Mud Lake, in Vermont. 
fo the mills on Barton River. These discussions always end- 
in an affirmative decision ; and the*disposition to test its 
correctness regularly gaining strength, as the practicability 
and importance of the measure were more and more develop- 
ed, it was at length resolved, in out-of-door convocation, 
that the thing should be done; and the 6th of June, 1810, 
the day of the general election in New-Hampshire, which, 
out of res to their parent state, they had usually observed 
as a holiday, was selected for the purpose. 
On the morning of that day, about 100 individuals from 
Glover, Barton, and several of the adjacent towns, assembled 
at Keene-Corner, with their shovels and spades, their hoes 
and axes, their crowbars and pick-axes, and their canteens, 
and voted that they would march to Long Lake, and there 
have ‘‘ a regular Election Scrape.”* They arrived at the 
scene of action about 10 o’clock; and having selected the 
spot which seemed most feasible, began to cut down the trees, 
and to dig a channel for the water across the belt of sandy 
earth which constituted the northern boundary of the lake. 
‘At 3 o’clock, a trench five feet wide, five or six rods in length, 
and seven or eight feet deep was completed. It began with- 
in a yard of the water, and reached to the brow of the decliv- 
ity towards Mud Lake; yet gradually descended in its Jine 
of direction, so that when the small remaining mass of sand 
in the trench should be removed, they might see the waters of 
Stream of the village. 
At length, the ———— given that all hands should 
* Serape in this sense is a colloquial Americanism, and denotes a fralic. 
