BROOK TROUT 



them thus far from that of the sportsman and lover 

 of the woods. The other stand-point from which 

 to regard them is that of the student of the develop- 

 ment of our summer resorts, and of the believer in the 

 march of modern improvements. There are five men 

 whom I hold chiefly responsible for the transformation 

 of the Adirondacks from a sportsman's paradise to a 

 fashionable summer resort, and these are in order of 

 precedence: Paul Smith, who entered the woods 

 from Vermont as a guide in the early fifties ; the late 

 Thomas C. Durant, who projected the Adirondack 

 Railroad, built from Saratoga to North Creek in the 

 early seventies ; Le Grand Cannon, who projected the 

 narrow-gauge Chateaugay Railroad, which was first 

 built from Plattsburg to Dannemora in 1879, and 

 completed by successive stages to Saranac Lake and 

 Lake Placid in 1889 and 1890; "Adirondack" Mur- 

 ray, whose ephemeral but flashing pen-pictures of the 

 " North Woods " first drew public attention to them 

 and gave him his nom-de-plume twenty-five years ago, 

 and lastly, Dr. Seward Webb, who finally carried 

 out his long-cherished plan of building a trunk-line 

 through the heart of the wilderness from Utica to 

 Montreal in 1891. I should perhaps add to this list 

 the names of Drs. Loomis, Trudeau, and others who 

 first directed attention to the Adirondacks as a resort 

 for consumptives and a natural sanitarium, but I find 

 that the hotel proprietors and many others interested 

 are not anxious to have this feature of the mountains 



