480 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



El Dorado of the sportsman combined. It is fourteen by 

 seven miles, average, broken into two great basins, connected 

 by a narrow strait. It is the largest and most savagely 

 picturesque of the lakes, and most abounding in game of 

 every sort. 



Trout of both kinds are so abundant in the great basins and 

 the numerous inlets, that the sport soon becomes fatiguing. 

 It has twenty-four islands, of from one hundred acres to ten 

 feet. On the west side is the inlet of a singular chain of small 

 lakes, eight in number, all of which abound in both varieties 

 of trout, and the accompanying fish, suckers, chubs, shiners, 

 blue cats, sun perch, etc. This remarkable chain extends 

 about fourteen miles north and east of the lakes, is deep, 

 clear and ice cold. On the east side of Racket Lake is the 

 inlet of Blue Mountain Lake, which is cold — almost to 

 freezing point — and like a solid crystal set upon a snowbank 

 of blanched sand. 



You can see, as you hang suspended in mid-air here in 

 your boat, the shoals of trout goi by in twenty feet water! 

 Think of that ! Then comes Long Lake again — this time 

 in earnest — for it is twenty miles long, with an outlet 

 towards Lak-e Champlain. Here is the difficult paradise of 

 sportsmen; and from Louis Lake, north, the moose becomes 

 more abundant, with its attendant train of smaller game, 

 and the distance, all told, from our perch on Speclater 

 Mountain to Long Lake, is only sixty miles! These are 

 the principal points of attraction within the range of our 

 utmost vision which I have here noted ; though now we can 

 perceive that even yet there are more than thirty-six lakes, 

 the names and distances of which I have not space to notice 

 in this bird's-eye view. 



But verily, this view of this our exceeding riches, in a 

 land so rude and unpromising in the mouth of fame, and it 

 may be together with the rareness of the air, has sharpened 

 our appetite for testing again the flavor of the good things 



