580 An Adirondack National Park. [June, 
poet and the artist. The wild deer laves in the mirroring lake or 
lies sequestered in the deep ravine. The trout break the placid 
surfaces at night and the note of the whip-poor-will echoes from 
valley to peak through wood and clearing. The catamount 
watches from the creviced rocks and the black bear hibernates in 
the recesses of the forests. This is nature’s miniature park of 
the earth. The mountains, cascades, rivulets, lakes and precipices 
are all scenic features in miniature, It is not a Yellowstone park, 
There are no three-mile vertical projections into space, no spout- 
ing geysers, no vast areas of sage brush, no great obsidian cliffs, 
no fossil forests, no bad lands of towering buttes and no bottom- 
less cafions. All such awful sublimity is here molded in minia- 
ture—a playground of the gods. 
Until the State survey began its work, ten years ago, but little 
was known of the Adirondack region. The only maps in posses- 
sion of the comptroller were some curiosities made by colonial 
and early surveyors. So uncertain were the boundary lines that 
the State lost thousands of acres of lands, and was uncertain of 
any of its possessions. Investigation developed the fact that the 
State lands were first sold for little more than five cents per acre. 
The timber was immediately cut and the land allowed to lapse to 
the State for unpaid taxes. Wherever the second growth became 
valuable the lands were repurchased at tax sales, denuded and 
again left barren for the State, which now owns about eight hun- 
dred and ninety-five square miles. The watershed comprises 
about three thousand square miles which are available for park 
purposes. 
The highest point in the State is Mt. — in Essex county, - 
which rises 5344 feet above high tide. It is the monarch of the 
Adirondacks, Mt. MacIntyre, 5112 feet, approximates this alti- 
tude. Seventeen peaks exceed 4500 feet, forty-four rise above 
3000 and seventy between that height and 2000 feet. 
Mt. Washington, with its bridle-path and its inclined railway, 
_ has long enjoyed a monopoly in the East. A change is approach- 
ing. A new star has appeared in the sky. It is Mt. Marcy— 
_ fature’s colossus to a noble name and the most ideal mountain 
_ on the face of the globe. It is no mere stone heap, Resting on 
its bosom are great forests, lofty spurs, precipices and lakes, Here 
also is Lake Tear-of-the- clouds, within one thousand feet of the 
: fameuit-—nthe supra-cloud source of the Hudson. It is the high- 
