LIES PISCATORI^. 549 



Port Kent, you find stages in readiness to carry you to Keese- 

 ville, a distance of four or five miles inland, where you stay 

 all niglit, and in the morning after breakfast take wagons, 

 provided with spring-seats, for Baker's or Martin's, on the 

 Lower Saranac. You get an excellent supper and a good 

 •bed in Keeseville, at a little hotel kept by Taggard, an obse- 

 quious fussy old fellow, who has a store under the same roof, 

 and occasionally sells an embryo sportsman what he calls, his 

 " outfit." 



Nor. Is it necessary to lay in stores or provisions for the 

 excursion ? 



Nes. By no means. Martin, at the lake, can supply all 

 the necessaries a reasonable man may require. If one is over 

 particular he had better take the few luxuries he may want 

 ■ from town. 



Joe. Did you find many persons visiting the Adirondacks 

 in August ? 



Nes. Crowds of them ; there are more excursionists at that 

 time than at any other. I found Taggard's hotel crammed 

 with cockney sportsmen, going and returning from the lakes ; 

 some of them the most pretentious, verdant- looking hunters 

 you ever laid eyes on. I recollect one party from Boston — 

 three out of the four were pop-eyed men with spectacles. 

 You meet with a man now and then, don't you, who looks, if 

 you were to slap him on the back with a shingle, as if his eyes 

 would fly out ? Well, the Nimrod of the party, who talked 

 about " driving deer" and " shining deer," was of that sort. 

 I'll bet he could not tell a buck from an old stump at thirty 

 yards, much less hit one. They all affected the rough, and 

 walked about with bowie-knives stuck in the belts of their 

 hunting-shirts, as if they expected next minute to meet a live 

 Indian — perfect Daniel Boones and Kit Oarsons. It almost 

 made me afraid to look at them, though no doubt they were 



