120 THE ST. REGIS AND SAKANACS. 



The mountain region must always 1)ear off the heroic hon- 

 ors, but the Upper Saranac, in my opinion, contends with 

 the Raquette for tlie milder supremacy of l)eauty and 

 grandeur combined. 



At dinner, I sat near a husband and wife,— the husband, 

 an invalid who came too late to the health giving forest. 

 He was as brown as sun and wind could make one, — the 

 result of many wrecks of out-door life,— ^but so thin and 

 weak that the complexion of heahh was a wretched satire 

 and mockery. Ilis wife was as tender and solicitous as if 

 he had been hei- infant child; but he answered her inquir- 

 ies in a hollow voice that was startling and painful to hear. 

 He leaned his head on his hand and his elbow on the table 

 and pushed aside his plate of food, imable to eat, with a 

 look of despair on his face, as if, at last, he had given up 

 his brave, long fight for life and had resolved to struggle 

 no longer. He w^as a stranger, — I saw him only a few min- 

 utes, — but I have imagined a hundred times the sorrowful 

 details of his summer's endeavoi- to arrest the progress of 

 insidious disease, and wondered, and wondered again, if 

 he lived to reach his home, and if he died with his family 

 at his bed-side. This man's hollow, sun-browned face and 

 despairing look, and his wife's anxious brow were the sad- 

 dest sight I ever happened upon in the wilderness. 



The cloud of the Saranac Hotel was obscuring the sun- 

 shine of the scene at St. Germain's Carry; and I finished 

 my dinner as speedily as my appetite and good manners 

 would permit, and joined more joyous society on the lawn 

 in front of the house. That sorrow was not my burden" to 

 bear. 



