Chapter XII (2)

It is difficult to describe the profound chasm opening below the Birmingham Falls. It is a prodigious rent in the earth's crust, making sudden right-angled turns. The visitor at first goes down a long stairway and walks on the rocky floor adjoining the torrent, enormous walls rising high above. There are various formations made by the boiling waters, ovens, anvils, chairs, pulpits, punch-bowls and the like, and, judging by their names, the Devil seems to be the owner of most of them. The chasm turns sharply around the "Elbow," and the waters rush through the narrow passage of "Hell Gate." There are many caves and lateral fissures, all the masonry being hewn square, as in fact the whole gorge is, such being the regularity of the stratification and the accuracy of the angles and joints,--the ponderous walls, reared on high, sometimes almost close together, making the deep pass narrow and gloomy. The gorge finally contracts so much there is no further room for walking, and a boat is taken for the remainder of the journey down the "Grand Flume." The torrent carries the boat along swiftly, guided by strong oarsmen both at bow and stern, swinging quickly around the bends, shooting the rapids and whirling through the eddies. After rushing along the "Flume," embracing the narrowest portions of the profound chasm, the boat finally floats out into the "Pool," where the waters at length settle into rest as they pass from the broken-down sandstone strata to the flat land beyond, where the river flows through its two mouths into the lake.

PLATTSBURG AND ITS NAVAL BATTLE.

Northward from Ausable River, Lake Champlain contains a number of large islands. Valeur Island is near the New York shore, and in the narrow channel separating them, in 1776, a desperate naval contest was fought between Arnold and Carleton, resulting in the defeat of the Americans. Beyond are the large islands of Grand Isle, South Hero and North Hero. Standing in an admirable position on Bluff Point, a high promontory on the western shore, is the great Hotel Champlain, elevated two hundred feet above the lake. To the north the Saranac River, coming from the southwest, flows out of the Adirondacks through its red sandstone gorge into Cumberland Bay, and at its mouth is the pleasant town of Plattsburg, having a population of seven thousand. The broad peninsula of Cumberland Head, projecting far to the southward into the lake, encloses the bay in front of the town. Plattsburg's greatest fame comes from its battle and Commodore McDonough's victory in 1814. The earliest settler was a British army officer, one Count de Fredenburgh, who built a sawmill at a fall near the mouth of the Saranac; but he was made way with early in the Revolution, and many have been the startling tales since told of his ghostly figure, in red coat and knee-breeches, stalking about the ruins of the old mill at Fredenburgh Falls. After the war, New York State confiscated the property and gave it to Zephaniah Platt and his associates, who established the town, and in 1785 rebuilt the mill. Plattsburg had become a place of so much importance that in the War of 1812-15 the English sent a large force from Canada for its capture. They attacked it on a Sunday morning in September, 1814, Sir George Prevost commanding the land forces and Commodore Downie a fleet of sixteen vessels. General Macomb had a small American detachment entrenched on the southern bank of the Saranac in hastily constructed earthworks, some remains being yet visible. The naval contest, however, decided the day, the superior British fleet being overcome by the better American tactics. McDonough had but fourteen vessels, anchored in a double line across the mouth of Cumberland Bay. As the British fleet rounded Cumberland Head to make the attack, a cock that was aboard McDonough's flag-ship, the "Saratoga," suddenly flew upon a gun and crowed lustily. This was esteemed a good omen, and giving three cheers, the Americans went to work with a will. After two hours' conflict the British fleet was defeated and captured. Downie was killed early in the action, and with fifteen other officers sleeps in Plattsburg Cemetery. McDonough was crushed by a falling boom, and afterwards was stunned by being struck with the flying head of one of his officers, knocked off by a cannon-shot, but he was undaunted to the end. Honors were heaped upon him, Congress giving him a gold medal, and he was also presented with an estate upon Cumberland Head overlooking the scene of his victory.

Plattsburg has the chief United States military post on the Canadian border, there being usually a large force stationed at the extensive barracks. It is also the terminus of railways coming from the Adirondacks, originally built to fetch out the iron-ores, of which it is an active market. One of these railways comes from Ausable Forks. Another is the Chateaugay Railroad, which has a circuitous route around the northern and eastern verges of the wilderness, from the Chateaugay and Chazy Lakes, where are the ore beds in a dismal region. Lyon Mountain, one of the chief ore producers, has its mines at two thousand feet elevation above the lake. Stretching far away to the northward is the immense Chateaugay forest and wilderness, extending into Canada. This railroad passes Dannemora, where is located the Clinton Prison, a New York State institution, at which it is said "they always have a number of people of leisure, who pass their time in meditation, making nails, cracking ore, and in other congenial pursuits." The railroad route cuts into the red sandstone gorge of the Saranac, and follows its valley out to Plattsburg. Some distance north of Plattsburg, and at the Canadian boundary, is Rouse's Point, a border customs station. This is the northern end of Lake Champlain, which discharges through the Richelieu or Sorel River into the St. Lawrence, the waters descending about one hundred feet, and mostly by the Chambly Rapids. The Chambly Canal, which locks down this descent, provides navigation facilities from Champlain to the St. Lawrence waters.

ENTERING THE ADIRONDACKS.

From Westport on Lake Champlain is one of the favorite routes into the Adirondacks. The name of this dark region originally came from the Mohawks, who applied it in derision to the less fortunate savages that inhabited the forbidding forests. The luxurious Mohawk, living in fertile valleys growing plenty of corn, could see nothing for his dusky enemy in this dismal wilderness to eat, excepting the dark trees growing on its mountain sides, and therefore the Mohawk called these people the Adirondacks, or "the bark and wood eaters." The actual derivation of the word is thought to come from the Iroquois root "atiron," meaning "to stretch along," referring to the mountain chains. Starting from Westport, we penetrate the region by a steep road into the Raven Pass, known as the "Gate of the Adirondacks," going through one of the ridges, among juniper bushes and aspen poplars, and thus get to the pleasant valley beyond, where flows the lovely Bouquet River. Here are a bunch of red-roofed cottages surrounded by elms contrasting prettily with the green fields, with boarding-houses and hotels interspersed, making up the village of Elizabethtown, the county-seat of Essex, which is hereabout called E-Town, for short. It spreads over the flat bottom of a fertile valley, encompassed around by high mountains. Circling all over the valley and yet concealed in deep gorges is the Bouquet River, which flows out to Lake Champlain, near the Split Rock. To the westward rises the sharp bare granite top of Mount Hurricane, nearly thirty-eight hundred feet, and to the southwest the towering Giant of the Valley, over forty-five hundred feet. Cobble Hill, rising two thousand feet, closes up the western end of the main village street, its ball-like top being a complete reproduction of a huge cobble-stone. Out to the northward goes a wild mountain road, through the Poke o' Moonshine Pass, leading to Ausable Chasm, twenty-three miles away.

Travelling westward from E-Town, we mount the enclosing slope of the Pleasant Valley, and through the gorge alongside Mount Hurricane, up the canyon of the western branch of Bouquet River. Crossing the summit among the granite rocks and forests, we then descend into another long, trough-like valley, stretching as a broad intervale far away both north and south, through which flows Ausable River. This intervale includes the charming "Flats of Keene," the sparkling Ausable waters meandering quietly over them beneath overhanging maples and alders, quivering aspens and gracefully swaying elms, occasionally dancing among the stones and shingle in some gentle rapid. Here are farmhouses, with many villas, the great mountain ridges protecting the valley from the wintry blasts. This intervale has in the eastern ridge the Giant of the Valley, with Mount Dix alongside, rising nearly five thousand feet, and to the southward, reared thirty-five hundred feet, exactly at the meridian, is the graceful Noon Mark Mountain, which casts the sun's noon shadow northward over the centre of the "Flats of Keene." The river, coming from the south, flows out of the lower Ausable Lake or the Long Pond, and dashes swiftly down its boulder-covered bed. Its waters are gathered largely from the eastern flanks of Mount Tahawus, and also from the galaxy of attendant peaks--Dix, Noon Mark, Colvin, Boreas, the Gothics, and others--grandly encircling the southern head of the attractive Keene Valley. The Ausable River rises under the brow of Tahawus, and flowing through the two long and narrow Ausable Lakes at two thousand feet elevation, traverses the whole length of the Keene Valley northward, to unite with its western branch at Ausable Forks, and thence goes through the great chasm to Lake Champlain. The head of the Keene Valley with the adjacent mountain slopes, extending through parts of three counties and covering a tract of forty square miles, is the "Adirondack Mountain Reserve." This reservation gives complete protection to the fish and game, and also preserves the forests and sources of the water supply. The Lower Ausable Lake is about two miles long and the Upper Ausable Lake nearly the same length, there being over a mile's distance between them. Some of the highest and most romantic of the Adirondack peaks environ these lakes. The sharply-cut summit of Mount Colvin rises forty-one hundred and fifty feet alongside them. The Ausable Lakes are in the bottom of a deep cleft between these great mountains, their sides rising almost sheer, two thousand feet and more above them. The lake shores are steep and rocky walls, reared apparently to the sky, the deep and contracted cleft making the lakes look more like rivers, surmounted high up the rocks by overhanging foliage, the trees diminutive in the distance. Of the Upper Ausable Lake, Warner writes that "In the sweep of its wooded shores, and the lovely contour of the lofty mountains that guard it, this lake is probably the most charming in America."

ADIRONDACK ATTRACTIONS.

The western guardian peaks of the Keene Valley are the main range of the Adirondacks, including Mount Marcy or Tahawus. Mount Colvin, alongside the Ausable Lakes, was named in honor of Verplanck Colvin, the New York surveyor and geologist, who devoted years of energy to the survey of this wilderness, and perhaps knew it better than anyone else. He was always in love with it, and thought that few really understood it. He described it as "a peculiar region, for though the geographical centre of the wilderness may be readily reached, in the light canoe-like boats of the guides, by lakes and rivers which form a labyrinth of passages for boats, the core, or rather cores, of this wilderness extend on either hand from these broad avenues of water, and in their interior spots remain to-day as untrodden by men and as unknown and wild as when the Indian paddled his birchen boat upon those streams and lakes. Amid these mountain solitudes are places where, in all probability, the foot of man never trod; and here the panther has his den among the rocks, and rears his savage kittens undisturbed, save by the growl of bear and screech of lynx, or the hoarse croak of the raven taking its share of the carcass of slain deer." The tangled Adirondack forest may to some seem monotonous and even dreary, but Mr. Street, the poet-writer of the region, thus enthusiastically refers to it: "Select a spot; let the eye become a little accustomed to the scene, and how the picturesque beauties, the delicate minute charms, the small overlooked things, steal out like lurking tints in an old picture. See that wreath of fern, graceful as the garland of a Greek victor at the games; how it hides the dark, crooked root, writhing snake-like from yon beech! Look at the beech's instep steeped in moss, green as emerald, with other moss twining round the silver-spotted trunk in garlands or in broad, thick, velvety spots! Behold yonder stump, charred with the hunter's camp-fire, and glistening black and satin-like in its cracked ebony! Mark yon mass of creeping pine, mantling the black mould with furzy softness! View those polished cohosh-berries, white as drops of pearl! See the purple barberries and crimson clusters of the hopple, contrasting their vivid hues!--and the massive logs peeled by decay--what gray, downy smoothness! and the grasses in which they are weltering--how full of beautiful motions and outlines!"

From the Keene Valley we climb up the gorge of a brisk little brook to the westward, and passing through the notch between Long Pond Mountain and the precipitous sides of the well-named Pitch-Off Mountain, come to the pair of elongated deep and narrow ponds between them,--the Cascade Lakes,--stretching nearly two miles. Huge boulders line their banks with a wall of rough and ponderous masonry, entwined with the roots of trees, and like the Ausable Lakes, they are another Alpine formation, their surfaces being at twenty-one hundred feet elevation, yet resting in the bottom of a tremendous chasm. An unique cascade, falling in successive leaps for seven hundred and fifty feet down the southern enclosing mountain wall, has given them the name--a delicate white lace ribbon of foaming water, finally passing into the lower lake. The grand dome of Mount McIntyre, in the main Adirondack range, rises in majesty to an elevation of fifty-two hundred feet, a sentinel beyond the western entrance to this remarkable pass. Formerly iron-ores were found here, but iron-making has been abandoned for the more profitable occupation of caring for the summer tourist. Beyond these lakes the summit of the pass is crossed, and there is a farm or two upon a broad plateau, at twenty-five hundred feet elevation, the highest cultivated land in New York State. Comparatively little but hay, however, can be raised, the seasons are so short and fickle. Deer haunt this remote region, and their runways can be seen. Emerging from the pass, with the little streams all running westward to the Ausable's western branch, there is got a fine view of the main Adirondack range, with the massive Mount McIntyre and the almost perpendicular side of Wallface rising beyond, the deep notch of the famous Indian Pass, cut down between them, showing plainly. Both peaks tower grandly above a surrounding galaxy of bleak, dark mountains.

OLD JOHN BROWN OF OSAWATOMIE.

This broad flat valley of the Western Ausable, the stream winding through it in a deeply-cut gorge, and surrounded on the south and west by an amphitheatre of the highest Adirondack peaks, is the township of North Elba in Essex county; and the valley and its fertile borders are the "Plains of Abraham." It is a farming district, so well enclosed by the mountains that the soil is fairly tillable. These plains gradually slope northwestward to the banks of two of the most noted of the Adirondack waters, Lake Placid and the Mirror Lake, with old Whiteface Mountain for their guardian, "heaving high his forehead bare." Here are the scattered buildings of the village of North Elba on the plains, and the more modern and fashionable settlement beyond at the lakes. To the southward is the great rounded top of Tahawus, the highest Adirondack peak, displayed through an opening vista, and at the northern border grandly stands Whiteface, the black sides abruptly changing to white, where an avalanche years ago denuded the granite cliffs near the top and swept down all the trees. Here at North Elba was the home and farm of "Old John Brown of Osawatomie." He had been given this homestead by Gerrit Smith, the great New York Abolitionist, in 1849, and there had also been founded here a colony of refuge for the negro slaves. It was then a remote and almost unknown place in the wilderness. Brown settled in the colony and built his little log house and barn near a huge boulder which stood a short distance from the front door. Here he formed his plan for liberating the slaves, and from here went to engage in the Kansas border wars of 1856. Returning, for three years he brooded on plans to liberate the negroes, and after further conflicts in Kansas projected the expedition into Virginia for the capture of Harper's Ferry in October, 1859. He declared his object to be to free all the slaves, and that he acted "by the authority of God Almighty." After his capture and conviction he discouraged efforts at liberation, saying, "I am of more use to the cause dead than living." After his death his body was brought up here to his home in the wilderness, for he had said, "When I die, bury me by the big rock, where I love to sit and read the word of God." Here he was buried on a bitterly cold day in December, 1859, a few sorrowing friends conducting the services and covering up his body in the frozen ground.

The old gravestone of his grandfather was brought from New England and put at the head of the grave, but it was soon so chipped off and broken by relic-hunters, it had to be enclosed in a case for preservation. Behind the grave rises the huge boulder on which has been carved, in large letters, "John Brown, 1859." The old gravestone is full of names both front and back, containing the record of his own death, and that of three sons, two losing their lives at Harper's Ferry and one in Kansas. The record of his life, graven on the stone, is: "John Brown, born May 9, 1800, was executed at Charleston, Va., Dec. 2, 1859." It is here that

"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
And his soul goes marching on."

Forty years afterwards, in 1899, the remains of seven of his companions in the Harper's Ferry raid were removed here and interred beside him. This region no longer knows Brown's kindred, for all have disappeared. Yet in the world's mutations, nothing could be more strange than that this remote wilderness, originally selected as a refuge and hiding-place for runaway slaves, should have become one of the most fashionable and popular health resorts in America. The farm and graves are now kept by New York State as a public park.

LAKE PLACID TO PAUL SMITH'S.

Lake Placid, nestling at the base of old Whiteface and elevated eighteen hundred and sixty feet above the sea, is often called the "Eye of the Adirondacks." Its mountain environment has made it almost a rectangle, four miles long and two miles wide. Down its centre, arranged in a row, are three beautiful islands, named respectively the Hawk, Moose and Buck, two being large and high and the third smaller. These divide it into alternating spaces of land and water much like a chess-board. To the eastward is the pretty Mirror Lake, about three miles in circuit. Both lakes have high wooded shores, and around them are gathered the hotels, cottages and camps of a large summer settlement. Surrounded by a grander galaxy of finer and higher mountains than any other lakes of this region, here is truly the "Eye" that views these dark Adirondacks in all their glory. These mountains are all sombre, and some almost inky black; many are hazy in the distance. To the northeast the Wilmington Pass, alongside Whiteface, lets out the western branch of Ausable; to the southward, the Indian Pass opening between McIntyre and Wallface is a source of the Hudson; to the westward, on the spurs of lower ranges, are the forests separating these lakes from the Saranacs. There are more than a hundred peaks around, of varying heights and features, among them the greatest of the Adirondacks. Embosomed within this wonderful amphitheatre is the glassy-surfaced lake, protected from the winds and storms, which is so attractive and so peaceful that it fully deserves its name, Lake Placid.

Crossing again to the westward through the forests and over the ridges, we come into the valley of the Saranac, with its lakes, and the ancient village of Harrietstown under the long ridge of Ampersand Mountain. Here on the Lower Saranac Lake is another summer settlement of villas, hotels and camps. Behind the mountain there is a little lake out of which flows a stream so crooked and twisted into and out of itself, turning around sweeping circles without accomplishing much progress, that its discoverers could not liken it to anything more appropriate than to the eccentric supernumerary of the alphabet, the "&." Thus the name of the "Ampersand" of the old spelling-books was applied first to the stream, and then to the lake and mountain, the latter being the guardian of the many lakes of this region. The Lower Saranac Lake is at fifteen hundred and forty feet elevation, and the Ampersand Mountain rises a thousand feet above it. A pretty church in the village is appropriately named for St. Luke the Physician, and here is located the Adirondack Sanitarium, this district being a favorite refuge for consumptives. The Chateaugay railroad comes in here, but the district beyond to the south and west has neither railroads nor wagon roads. It is such a labyrinth of lakes and water courses it can only be traversed in boats.

The whole western part of the Adirondacks is an elevated tableland, containing many hills and peaks, but saturated by water ways. Therefore "canoeing and carrying" is the method of transportation. The Lower Saranac Lake is five miles long, and beyond it is Round Lake, over two miles in diameter, beyond that being the Upper Saranac Lake, nearly eight miles long and dotted with islands. There are portages between them where the canoes have to be carried. The outlet of the Upper Saranac is a magnificent cataract and rapid, descending thirty-five feet in a distance of about one hundred yards. From the Upper Saranac Lake other portages, or "carrys," as they are called, lead over to the Blue Mountain region, the Raquette River and the Tupper Lakes to the westward. The Adirondack ranges here are lower, and the forests get denser, but all about are dotted the summer settlements, some of them displaying most elaborate construction. Every place has its boat-house and canoe-rack, and boats are moving in all directions. At the head of the Upper Saranac is St. Regis Mountain, and a long "carry" of about four miles through the forest goes over to the Big Clear Pond, the head of the Saranac system of waters. Crossing this lake, yet another "carry" takes us over the watershed. This is a famous portage in the liquid district, the "St. Germain carry" of over a mile between the Saranac headwaters and the sources of St. Regis River, flowing out westward and then northward to the St. Lawrence. It leads to the series of St. Regis Lakes, and finally on the bank of the Lower St. Regis to the great hotel of the woods--Paul Smith's--with many camps surrounding the shores of the lake. Apollus Smith, a shrewd Yankee, came here many years ago, when the locality was an unbroken wilderness, and built a small log house in the forest as an abiding-place for the hunter and angler. It was repeatedly enlarged, and with it the domain, now covering several thousand acres, until the hostelrie has become an unique mixture of the backwoods with modern fashion, and is everywhere known as the typical house of the Adirondack region. Upon the hill behind the hotel is the attractive little church of "St. John in the Wilderness," appropriately built of logs hewn in the surrounding forest.

ADIRONDACK LAKES.

To the westward is the water system of the Raquette River, leading to the St. Lawrence; this stream, the chief one in the district, flowing out of Raquette Lake. This lake is irregularly shaped, about ten miles long, and surrounded by low hills, its elevation being nearly eighteen hundred feet. The dense forests that are adjacent teem with game, and its hotels and private camps are among the best in the region, "Camp Pine Knot" being especially famous as the most elaborate and attractive of its kind in America. Blue Mountain rises to the eastward nearly thirty-eight hundred feet, and at its southwestern base is the Blue Mountain Lake, having on its southern edge the small Eagle Lake, where lived in a solitary house called the Eagle's Nest the noted "Ned Buntline," the author. To the southwest of Raquette are the chain of eight Fulton Lakes. North of Raquette are the Forked Lakes, and northeast of it, following down the Raquette River, Long Lake, which is fourteen miles long and barely a mile wide in the broadest part, having Mount Seward rising at its northern end. To the northwest, still following down the Raquette, are the Tupper Lakes. These are a few of the larger lakes in this labyrinth of water courses, there being hundreds of smaller ones; and, as the forest and water ways extend northwest, the land gradually falls away towards the great plain adjoining the St. Lawrence. These regions, however, are remote from ordinary travel, and the western Adirondack forests are rarely penetrated by visitors excepting in search of sport.

This wonderful region has only during recent years attracted general public attention as a great sanitarium and summer resort, but its popularity constantly increases. Its dark and forbidding mountains have become additionally attractive as they are better known, probably for the reason, as John Ruskin tells us, that "Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery." Its universal woods and waters have a resistless charm. As one wanders through the devious pathways, or glides over the glassy surface of one of its myriad lakes, the vivid coloring and richness of the plant life recall Thomson, in the _Seasons_:

"Who can paint
Like Nature? Can imagination boast
Amid its gay creation hues like her's?
Or can it mix them with that matchless skill,
And lose them in each other, as appears
In every bud that blows?"

But after all, the great Adirondack forests, vast and trackless, much of them in their primitive wildness, are to the visitor possibly the grandest of the charms of this weird region. The "Great North Woods" still exist as the primeval forest on many square miles of these broad mountains and deep valleys, recalling in their solitude and grandeur William Cullen Bryant's _Forest Hymn_:

"The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them--ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence he knelt down
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication."

CROSSING THE EMPIRE STATE.