88 WAKE-ROBIN 



it no object. He usually went to Ticonderoga on 

 Lake Champlain once a year for his groceries, etc. 

 His post-office was twelve miles below at the Lower 

 Works, where the mail passed twice a week. There 

 was not a doctor, or lawyer, or preacher within 

 twenty-five miles. In winter, months elapse with- 

 out their seeing anybody from the outside world. 

 In summer, parties occasionally pass through here 

 on their way to Indian Pass and Mount Marcy. 

 Hundreds of tons of good timothy hay annually rot 

 down upon the cleared land. 



After nightfall we went out and walked up and 

 down the grass-grown streets. It was a curious 

 and melancholy spectacle. The remoteness and sur- 

 rounding wildness rendered the scene doubly im- 

 pressive. And the next day and the next the place 

 was an object of wonder. There were about thirty 

 buildings in all, most of them small frame houses 

 with a door and two windows opening into a small 

 yard in front and a garden in the rear, such as are 

 usually occupied by the laborers in a country manu- 

 facturing district. There was one large two-story 

 boarding-house, a schoolhouse with a cupola and a 

 bell in it, and numerous sheds and forges, and a 

 saw-mill. In front of the saw-mill, and ready to 

 be rolled to their place on the carriage, lay a large 

 pile of pine logs, so decayed that one could run his 

 walking-stick through them. Near by, a building 

 filled with charcoal was bursting open and the coal 

 going to waste on the ground. The smelting works 

 were also much crumbled by time. The school- 



