a 
Co 
THE ADIRONDACKS 75 
Pond, —a pretty sheet of water, lying like a silver 
mirror in the lap of the mountain, about a mile 
long and half a mile wide, surrounded by dark for- 
ests of balsam, hemlock, and pine, and, like the 
one we had just passed, a very picture of unbroken 
solitude. 
It is not in the woods alone to give one this 
impression of utter loneliness. In the woods are 
sounds and voices, and a dumb kind of companion- 
ship; one is little more than a walking tree himself; 
but come upon one of these mountain lakes, and the 
wildness stands revealed and meets you face to face. 
Water is thus facile and adaptive, that it makes the _ 
wild more wild, while it enhances culture and art. x 
The end of the pond which we approached was 
quite shoal, the stones rising above the surface as 
in a summer brook, and everywhere showing marks 
of the noble game we were in quest of, — foot- 
prints, dung, and cropped and uprooted lily-pads. 
After resting for a half hour, and replenishing our 
game-pouches at the expense of the most respectable 
frogs of the locality, we filed on through the soft, 
resinous pine-woods, intending to camp near the 
other end of the lake, where, the guide assured us, 
we should find a hunter’s cabin ready built. A 
half hour’s march brought us to the locality, and a 
most delightful one it was, —so hospitable and in- 
viting that all the kindly and beneficent influences 
of the woods must have abided there. In a slight 
depression in the woods, about one hundred yards 
from the lake, though hidden from it for a hunter’s 
