Mineralogy, Geology, &c. 49 
arches did not surpass the mountain ridges, while they termi- 
nated in the lake, and attended our little skiff for many miles. 
The setting sun also gilded the mountains and the clouds 
that hovered over them, and the little islands, which in 
great numbers rise out of the lake and present green patch- 
es of shrubbery and trees, apparently springing from the 
water, and often resembling, by their minuteness and deli- 
cacy, the clumps of a park, or even the artificial groups of 
a green-house. Fine as is the scenery at the southern end 
of the lake, and in all the wider part of it, within the com- 
pass of the first twelve miles from Fort George—its gran- 
deur is very much augmented, after passing Tongue Moun- 
tain, and entering the narrow part, where the mountains 
close in upon you on both sides, and present an endless di- 
versity of grand and beautiful scenery. It is a pleasing re- 
flection, that even after this part of the United States shall 
have become as populous as England or Holland, this lake 
will still retain the fine peculiarities of its scenery, for they 
are too bold, too wild, and too untractable, ever to be ma- 
terially softened and spoiled by the hand of man. 
This digression, although not altogether in place in a sci- 
entific Journal, may perhaps be pardoned by the reader, 
and therefore we will presume so far as to add, that the 
deer are still hunted with success upon the borders of. this 
fake. The hounds drive them from the recesses of the 
mountains, when they take refuge in the water, and the 
huntsmen easily overtaking them in an element not their 
own, seize them by the horns, knock them on the head, 
and dragging their necks over the side of the boat, cut their 
throats. There is a celebrated mountain about fourteen 
miles from Ticonderoga, called the Buck Mountain, from 
the fact that a buck, pursued by the dogs, leaped from its 
summit, overhanging the lake in the form of a precipice, 
and was literally impaled alive upon a sharp pointed tree, 
which projected below.* 
Walls of Ticonderoga.—After all the dilapidations of time 
and of man, Ticonderoga, with its mutilated walls and bar- 
* This circumstance was mentioned to us by the man whose dogs drove 
the buck to this desperate extremity. He stated, that he ltad cometimes 
taken forty deer in a season. 
Vou. IV.....No. 1. 7 
