108- SAYS OUT OF DOORS. 



I marvel that you pause not when the bird, 

 By happy thought to melody is stirred ; 

 When, as a flash of ruddy flame, I see 

 The summer redbird poised upon the tree, 

 Or hear the happy redstart warbling where 

 The lichened rocks are draped with maiden-hair. 



Here would I linger while the summer stays. 

 Here gladly spend brief autumn's shortening days, 

 Nor ask a fairer friend the winter through 

 Than I have found, dear mountain brook, in you ; 

 And when strength fails— my weary eyes grow dim — 

 Be thy sweet rippling song my funeral hymn. 



A word as to this lake. Hopatcong has an altitude of 

 ahout twelve hundred feet, and lies between high hills 

 that completely hem it in. Look where you will, you can 

 see no outlet ; nothing hut the wide waters and the wooded 

 mountain-side beyond. To a certain extent, it is artifi- 

 cial, but the visitor would not suspect this from the general 

 appearance. More than half a century ago, the Morris 

 Canal was built, and supplied by a feeder from an outlet 

 of the lake. This, of course, increased the area and depth 

 of the lake, as the construction of gates at the outlet was 

 a necessity ; and now the waters, thus backed up, have 

 found their " way through cross-gorges into parallel val- 

 leys, originally heavily wooded, and the denuded stems 

 and shorter stumps, standing up through the glittering 

 water or resting in the shallows, suggest a prosaic if not 

 a classical appropriateness in the local name of one of 

 them — the ' River Styx.' In this locality, and in the so- 

 called ' Cedar Swamp,' another deep bay in this nine- 

 mile-long pond," continues our author, " on nearly every 

 floating log or fallen tree-top or loosened stump could be 

 found, when they were turned over, shining patches of 

 white or yellowish gemmules, left in groups upon the 

 smooth surface or partly hidden in little crevices of bark 

 or root." This was in October. I confess to have not 



