ynLO LAKES OF THE ABIO>T)ACK. 473 



Spirit" of them all with this most gossip and desultory 

 mood in which our volume was at first conceived. 



A summer's journey of sporting adventure towards the 

 North, dating at a much later period in my life than those 

 previously given as personal, included a sojourn amongst 

 that linked and wonderful cluster of Lakes, extending from 

 Hamilton county, in the west of ^STew York, north to Lake 

 Champlain and the St. Lawrence. Something of the " Wild 

 Scenes" and characteristic incidents amidst the haughty 

 solitudes of those rugged hemlock-bristled Ariondacks, 

 and their chaste, cold, glistening Lakes, I must give in a 

 fragmentary way. 



I had reached Lake Pleasant in Hamilton county, the 

 semi-civilized outpost of the wilderness interior of " Sporting 

 Grounds," through the ordinary tribidations of jolting, 

 fatigue, mud, rain, etc., in company with an English friend, 

 a placid " son of the angle," in the strict Waltonian sense, 

 but altogether an unaccustomed hunter of wilderness game. 



Lake Pleasant, upon the outlet end of which we were 

 temporarily located in a rude board hovel, dignified as " mine 

 inn !" — was overlooked at the opposite by an abrupt moun- 

 tain — one of the Ariondacks — named from the Lidian name, 

 the Speclater. The inlet came in at its foot, and from the 

 steep top, a bird's-eye. view could be obtained of the whole 

 scene of our future operations. After a night's rest, we 

 made a day of it to clamber the huge rocky sides of this 

 ancient sentinel that from its bald crest we should look 

 forth, that our eyes might be "made aware." 



I wanted to convey some idea of what we saw, but I find 

 that though very nice in theory the practice is difficult. I 

 could only think, as we ascended, in the words of one who 

 spake of old — " Get thee up into the top of Pisgah, and lift 

 thine eyes westward, and northward, and southward, and east- 

 ward, behold it with thine own eves I" And, verily, when we 



