174 HILLS AND LAKES. 



Raquet, one of the most beautiful little rivers in the 

 world. In this mountain region, one would look for 

 a rapid, roaring stream, one that went cascading 

 down steep declivities, swirling away between beetling 

 precipices, and plunging down perpendicular ledges, 

 in its mad course towards the great deep ; but nothing 

 would be wider of the truth. For fifteen miles above, 

 and some fifty below where we entered it, this river, 

 save in a single locality, flows along with a deep and 

 steady current, winding around wooded points, and 

 stretching in long reaches through an unbroken wil- 

 derness, the shores lined with forests of gigantic 

 growth, or natural meadows. 



The appearance along the shores is that ot a coun- 

 try beautifully level, and were it not for the tall peaks 

 standing out against the sky, dim and shadowy in the 

 distance, and the mountain ranges looming up where 

 a break occurs in the forest, one would think that he 

 was in a region like the Mississippi valley, rather than 

 hemmed in by the Adirondacks, and upon the highest 

 land, the dividing ridge that separates the waters that 

 flow into the Atlantic through the Hudson, from those 

 that find their way to the majestic St. Lawrence. This 

 is a cold, hard region doubtless. Its winters are long, 



