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ride to Saranac was often in severe weather no slight hardship; but now that one can leave New York by a night express, breakfast at Plattsburgh, and reach Saranac by noon without further change, the journey has lost its terrors. It is, in fact, no small pleasure in itself. If one makes it by daylight the winter scenery of the upper Hudson and of Lake Champlain furnishes a charming introduction to the wilder and more solitary winter landscapes of the woods. I was so fortunate as to make this journey for the first time on a day of crystalline purity and phenomenal frigidity. The thermometer registered fifteen degrees below zero at eight o'clock, and the mercury sank steadily during the day and the succeeding night until it touched forty-five degrees. The country was covered with snow of a dazzling purity, and the light was of a brilliancy unknown to summer days. The narrow-gauge railroad between Plattsburgh and Saranac makes its devious way through a sombre and lonely country, thinly settled, sparsely wooded, with tracts of dreary upland denuded by the axe of the woodcutter and by forest fires. It steadily climbs skyward until, on the ridge of Lyon Mountain, it reaches an altitude of two thousand feet. Noble outlooks break the monotony of the landscape from time to time, and after leaving Lyon Mountain the country rapidly takes on a bolder and more impressive character. Commanding mountain ranges interrupt the horizon line, great forests stretch away toward the wilderness of which they form the outskirts, snow-covered lakes and ponds are skirted and left behind, and one begins to feel the sentiment of the wintry woods. In the intense cold every outline of tree or mountain-peak is sharply defined, and the stainless white below and the stainless blue above give the day a dazzling radiancy. The trackmen, in their red overstockings, their manycolored blouses, and their brilliant toques, look like gnomes, the frost having whitened their beards so artistically that Father Time himself might well be envious of the skill which effects so striking a transformation.

In the keen, clear air the little village of Saranac takes on an almost pictu

resque air, and nestles among the wintry hills as if conscious of the immense capital of health and pleasure upon which it can draw at will. The white smoke from every chimney rises in a straight or sinuous column, sharply defined against the blue sky; the minor uglinesses are concealed by the charitable mantle of snow; and the mere fact of the presence of human life in the wilderness, at such temperature, inspires one with interest and respect. With the exception of an occasional load of logs one sees few indications of active life in the little

community. It is the vacation season with many of the permanent residents, whose brief harvest-time is during the summer months; others are in the lumber camps; still others are in the service of the winter colony of visitors. The natives of the Adirondacks are, as a class, a kindly and trustworthy people, thoroughly capable in their own lines of work, frank in speech and courteous in manner. They are not given to undue rapacity in their dealings with the throngs who annually invade their territory, and in their civility and honesty they certainly differ very pleasantly from most men whose fortune it is to live on the tourist, the sportsman, or the invalid. The Adirondack guide is often a man of parts and resourceskilled in woodcraft, apt in emergencies, full of good sense and good humor, and a companion of one's vacation mood who adds not a little to its zest and pleasure.

One readily falls into the ways of the winter colony at Saranac, and finds them ways of pleasantness; not at all akin to the rigor of the climate, but rather suggestive of tropical deliberation and leisureliness. The health-seekers usually number from fifty to seventy persons, and although some form of pulmonary trouble has transplanted them to this wintry clime there is no suggestion of invalidism in the atmosphere of the place. A more aggressively active set of persons is probably not to be found the world over. Now that the physicians have practically agreed that air and nutrition are the principal if not the only means of overcoming pulmonary weakness or disease, out-of-door life is the invariable prescription for all

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troubles of this kind. Four or five hours a day in the open air, in all kinds of weather, serve the double purpose of securing an abundance of pure air and stimulating a vigorous appetite. The temperature is often very low, but the dryness of the atmosphere takes the sting out of the cold. Those who have not had the opportunity of comparing a moist with a dry atmosphere in winter can hardly understand how little physical comfort depends on the mercury, and how much it depends on the presence or absence of humidity. One may feel far more discomfort on the coast, with the mercury at twenty degrees above zero, than in the Adirondacks with the mercury at ten or even twenty degrees below zero. On a clear day without wind, a low temperature has no terrors in a dry air; it necessitates a certain amount of vigilance in the surveillance of ears and nose, but it means pure exhilaration. Fatigue is an unknown sensation on such days; one walks miles without any sense of weariness, and without any consciousness of unusual cold. In the crystalline air the mountains stand out in startling distinctness; every tree is individualized; the dark masses of spruce or pine accentuate the whiteness of the snow and the blue of the sky; and one walks on and on with a sense of buoyancy and vitality which are a physical inspiration. On such a day no task seems too great to be accomplished, so powerfully does nature reinforce one with the tonic of dry mountain air. Returning from a three hours' ramble through the woods one can hardly accept the statement of the thermometer, which reports twentythree degrees below zero.

The tonic quality of the air during the periods of low temperature is by no means the only delightful effect. The landscape assumes a distinctness which is a revelation to one unfamiliar with it; there is a splendor of light, a delicacy and softness of color in the morning and evening skies, which are unknown to balmier days. The little village, seen by moonlight, becomes almost poetic in its suggestion of domesticity under a marvellously brilliant sky, and encircled by hills whose covering of snow fairly shines in the radiancy of a night so still

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that nature seems to be waiting, in her most brilliant mood, for the coming of some favored guest. One lingers in the prosaic streets, and walks again and again from bridge to bridge, under the spell of a new enchantment; the softness and mystery of the moonlight of summer nights has yielded to the spell of an almost overpowering brilliancy. Within doors generous open fires keep the cold at bay, although the thick incrustation on the window-panes shows how sharp the struggle is, and by how fragile a line the summer within is separated from the winter without. ing the night the mercury falls rapidly, and one is awakened at intervals by sharp explosions. If he happens to be a reader of Thoreau he recalls certain records in which the Concord naturalist reports similar experiences. On the 11th day of January, 1859, the mercury having fallen to twenty-two degrees below zero, he writes: "Going to Boston to-day I find that the cracking of the ground last night is the subject of conversation in the cars, and that it was quite general. I see many cracks in Concord and Cambridge. It would appear, then, that the ground cracks on the advent of very severe cold weather. I had not heard it before this winter." Domestic architecture suffers not a little from the same cause, and in the spring nails that have been drawn by the invisible fingers of the frost must be driven into place.

Nature is not to be trifled with in very low temperatures; ceaseless vigilance is the price of comfort and safety. To insure both in the open air, coats of buffalo or coon skin are worn, with felt boots, and fur caps of many kinds and shapes to complete the outfit. Add to these a pair of fur gloves, and one is armed cap-a-pie against all the assaults of the enemy. Indeed, the appearance of a sleighing party in the Adirondacks would fill the uninitiated with nameless terror; so lost is all human resemblance in a mass of skins, furs, and uncouth apparel of ingenious design.

Those who have had large experience of the delights and discomforts of sleighing know that the pleasure which it may yield depends on a nice adjustment of road, scenery, weather, temperature, and

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companionship. It is, at most times and under most circumstances a purely speculative venture; but like all speculative ventures it sometimes yields very large returns. In the Adirondacks, on a brilliant day, it comes as near perfect enjoyment of sense and soul as anything which the narrow resources of our planet afford. For pure

physical exhilara

tion, without fatigue,

there is no other form of exercise to be compared with it; while to the eye, and to the mind stimulated to unusual sensitiveness to impression, it offers a succession of joys in which the imagination secures the most complete satisfaction. A pleasure which finds its way to the mind through a quickening of the senses is generally of that high order which leaves no sting in the memory. Certainly no physical delight can harvest so many lasting impressions of color and form and beautiful grouping as sleighing through the winter woods. It is not an incidental pastime with the

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