Lake Umbagog
1907
August 9
(No 8)
  Looking well to the left from the piazza the eye
ranged over a green door yard past a barn thickly plastered,
just beneath the eaves, with the mud nests of a large colony
of cliff Swallows. Just beyond the barn lay a piece of
boggy, brush encumbered ground where Swamp Sparrows mated
in spring and Woodcock lurked in summer. Beyond this again
were knolls and ridges densely covered with spruces, balsams
and arbor vitaes. In these trees, within one hundred yards of
the house, Cape May Warblers bred but we never succeeded
in finding any of their nests. These wooded elevations were visited or
frequented, of course, by many other birds. I have seen there
Great Horned Owls, Pileated Woodpeckers, Ruffed Grouse & Spruce
Partridges besides nearly if not quite every species of Warbler that
occurs regularly in the region about the lake.
Lake House
  The bog was crossed on a corduroy foundation by a cart road, which, after ascending
one of the knolls, came out into an open pasture of considerable
extent sprinkled with young spruces and balsams and with dense beds
of raspberry bushes which half covered
the crumbling stumps of the giant white pines that had flourished
there by hundreds in still earlier times.
  Beyond the pasture were two attractive wood roads,
much frequented by collectors and sportsmen. One of them led to
the outlying farm where Gideon Stone and his brother Levi were then
living, the other to the Tyler opening formerly under cultivation
but then abandoned and growing up to woods.
Lake House
  The view southward from the Lake House was less
interesting than either of the others for it was chiefly filled
with the monotonously open and uniform-looking farm fields and
pastures sloping steeply up on either side of Upton Hill. On the left,
however, the monotony was somewhat relieved by the bold,
wooded eminence known as Hedghog Hill.
