LONESOME ROCK. 87 



or the requirements of natural decorum. You can lay 

 around loose ; the lazier you are the better the boatman 

 in your employ likes it. If you choose to drift leisurely and 

 quietly under the shadow of the hills along the shore, 

 examining the rocks that lie there like a ruined wall, or 

 explore the beautiful and secluded bays that hide around 

 behind the bluffs, or lay off under the shade of the fir trees 

 on the islands, or smoke your cigar or pipe by the beautiful 

 spring that comes bubbling up by the side of some moss- 

 covered boulder, or from beneath the tangled roots of some 

 gnarled birch or maple, you can do any or all of these, and 

 have a man to help you for twelve shillings a day and board, 

 or you can do it just about as well alone. 



" You remember LONESOME KOCK, in the Lower Saranac, a 

 great boulder that lifts its head some ten or fifteen feet above 

 the surface, away out near the middle of the lake, around 

 which the water is of unknown depth. This rock, which is 

 always dark and* bare, is, as you will remember, of conical 

 shape, sharp pointed at the top, and stands up about the 

 size of a small hay-stack, in the midst of the waters. Do 

 you remember the account that somebody gives in a ragged 

 but terse kind of verse, of the ' gentleman in black/ who, 

 as he walked about, 



' Backward and forward he switched his long tail, 

 As a gentleman switches his cane?' 



And of whose dress it was facetiously said : 



' His coat was red and his breeches were blue, 

 With a hole behind for his tail to stick through.' 



