88 WAKE-ROBIN 
it no object. He usually went to Ticonderoga on 
Lake Champlain 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 doctor, or lawyer, or preacher within 
twenty-five miles. In winter, months elapse with- 
out their seeing anybody from the outside world. 
In summer, parties occasionally 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 sur- 
rounding wildness rendered the scene doubly im- 
pressive. And the next day and the next the place 
was an object 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 manu- 
facturing district. There was one large two-story 
boarding-house, a schoolhouse with a cupola and a 
bell in it, and numerous sheds and forges, and a 
saw-mill. In front of the saw-mill, and ready to 
be rolled to their place on the carriage, lay a large 
pile of pine logs, so decayed that one could run his 
walking-stick through them. Near by, a building 
filled with charcoal was bursting open and the coal 
going to waste on the ground. The smelting works 
were also much crumbled by time. The school- 
