104 ADIBONDAC. 



wantonly destroyed but allowed to go to decay prop- 

 erly and decently. He had a substantial roomy 

 frame house and any amount of grass and woodland. 

 He had good barns and kept considerable stock, and 

 raised various farm products, but only for his own 

 use, as the difficulties of transportation to market 

 some seventy miles distant made it no object. He 

 usually went to Ticonderoga on Lake Champlaiu 

 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 doc- 

 dor, or lawyer, or preacher within twenty-five miles. 

 In winter, months elapse without their seeing anybody 

 from the outside world. In summer, parties occa- 

 sionally 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 surround- 

 ing wildness rendered the scene doubly impressive. 

 And the next day and the next the place was an ob- 

 ject 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 manufacturing district. 

 There was one large two-story boarding-house, a 

 tchool-house with a cupola and a bell in it, and nil 



