LETTER FROM CHANCELLOR KENT. 293 



FROM CHANCELLOR KENT. 



ALBANY, October 14, 1820. 

 >EAR SIR, Your obliging letter of the 9th instant has 



in received, accompanied with your " Tour to Quebec," 

 and I return my sincere thanks for this mark of your kind- 

 ness, and for the great pleasure which the perusal of your 

 book has given me. I have read it very attentively, and 

 beg leave to bear my humble testimony to the justness and 

 beauty of its descriptions and the accuracy of its historical 

 illustrations. It has, also, that moral charm and those graces 

 of composition which are diffused over all the productions 

 of your pen. There is not a page too much on geological 

 observations, and no more than what was due to your char- 

 acter and required from your station. 



I have not been to the northward this summer as you 

 have been informed, but I have frequently visited the 

 grounds over which you passed between the matchless val- 

 ley of Lebanon and Montreal. The first time I visited the 

 shore of Lake Champlain was twenty-five years ago with 

 Mrs. K., and I shall never forget the emotions excited when 

 we landed for the first time near sunset at Ticonderoga, 

 and hastily ascended to the top of its mouldering walls 

 (then a solitary and awful ruin) and caught within the 

 sweep of the eye the majestic scenery around the place, 

 and the distant lofty summits of the Green Mountains. I 

 visited at that time old Fort St. Frederick at Crown Point, 

 built by the French in 1731, and the near and large fort 

 on higher ground, built by Lord Amherst in 1759. There 

 was not then a human habitation on that peninsula. We 

 returned through Lake George in a small sail-boat, and 

 lodged at a dismal old house which had been a military bar- 

 rack on the shore below fort George. It was all woods 

 where the beautiful village of Caldwell now stands, and we 

 ran over the ruins of Fort William Henry, then most fear- 

 fully interesting from historical recollections, for it appeared 



