92 FLY-FISHING IN MAINE LAKES. 



Her mountain home was under the shadow of 

 those lordly hills. Then the pictured story of the 

 Willey family, as seen in our early geographies, 

 telling in such vivid language the story of their 

 sudden destruction : these, and oft-repeated stories 

 of our New England hills, the sight of the well- 

 filled and top-crowded stage-coach, driven by that 

 pioneer of mountain travel, Joseph Smith, the 

 veteran whom all old Portlanders will well remem- 

 ber, united to fix indelibly in my young mind the 

 wish that I might soon be old enough to be indulged 

 with a nearer view of what, to my youthful imagina- 

 tion, seemed a world beyond my ken. 



And so I grew up to love and revere these 

 " Hills ; " and from my first ascent of Mount Wash- 

 ington, by bridle-path from Crawford's, to later 

 ones by rail, from the same starting-point, and by 

 carriage-road from the Glen, till now, when with 

 past memories fresh in my mind I look forward 

 with fond anticipation of renewed enjoyment, I 

 feel, as it were, that these hills were a part of the 

 better part of myself. 



And for far more than what I have written, for 

 the remembrance of those excursions includes the 

 memory of a brother, a wife, and a mother, who 

 shared the excitement of the ascent, and the 

 rich return in the sublimity of the scenes spread 



