WILD LAKES OF THE ARIONDACK, 473 
Spirit” of them all with this most gossip and desultory 
mood in which our volume was at first conceived. 
A sum.ner’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 
Haulton county, in the west of New York, north to Lake 
Ch..plain and the St. Lawrence. Something of the “Wild 
Secnes” 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. 
~ Thad reached Lake Pleasant in Hamilton county, the 
semi-civilized outpost of the wilderness interior of ‘“ Sporting 
Grounds,” through the ordinary tribulations of jolting, 
fatique, 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 
tenorarily 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 Indian 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 eyes!’ And, verily, when we , 
