LAKE MOHONK AND VICINITY 



AS SEEN BY A LANDSCAPE GARDENER. 



HE PLACES in our country that 

 '~ are increasingly becoming 

 known from their picturesque 

 attractions are greater every 

 year, and we hope soon to say 

 greater in the number of those 

 that are being preserved and 

 cared for. Among those of 

 which it can now be said, Lake Mohonk is con- 

 spicuous. For nearly half a century it has been vis- 

 ited by artists, whose admired pictures have been 

 but a faint reflex of the beauty 

 they attempted to depict. The 

 great artist and designer, whose 

 work exceeds all others, had been 

 for ages slowly working out this 



3^ 



The Tower on Goyot's Hill, Lake Mohonk 



perfect picture among the lofty hills of Ulster 

 county, New York. 



At some far and ancient period of time the top of 

 the highest of the Shawangunk mountains, nearly 

 two thousand feet high, was cleft in twain by the 

 unknown forces of nature, and for half a mile this 

 deep and wondrous basin became filled with water, 

 now as clear and green as the ocean, and like it, 

 even in its isolation, the home of many fish. This 

 is Lake Mohonk, said to signify in the language of 

 the Indian " On the great sky top." 



Travelers tell us that nowhere east of the 

 Rocky mountains are there rocks that will at 

 all compare with those seen here, and no one 

 so fortunate as to see these will ever question 

 it. Composed mainly of a quartz conglomerate, 

 they defy the elements, and from the impercep- 

 tible changes the ordinary forces of nature 

 make upon them, we are helped to a realization 

 of what it must have been when they were riven 

 and sliced, or piled 

 and tossed into the 

 grand and inspiring 

 positions we now en- 

 joy, apparently with 

 the ease of a wave 

 rolling the pebbles on 

 a seashore. Covered 

 with black and dark 

 brown lichens, whose 

 upper surfaces be- 

 come an olive green 

 when soaked with rain 

 or dew, they would be 

 enough to absorb our 

 attention were it not 

 diverted by the tall 

 pines and hemlocks 

 springing from their 

 bases, and even grow- 

 ing from their tops 

 and sides with no soil 

 to support them that 

 our eyes can discover. 

 What the Japanese 

 practice as an art is 

 here done by nature. 

 In places where in- 



