top was fringed with trees, which seemed bushes from the height, and great fragments of broken rock were piled around its base. We ran our boat on the beach of Sabbath Day Point and asked lodgings at the house. An old woman, after a multitude of guesses and calculations, guessed as how she could accommodate us with a supper and bed, though she couldn't say nohow how we should like it, seeing as how she warn't used to visitors. The house was an old, rickety, dingy shingle palace, with a potato garden in front, hogs perambulating the outhouses, and a group of old men and women engaged in earnest conversation in the tumble-down portico. The chief figure was an old gray-haired man, tall and spare as a skeleton, who was giving some advice to a chubby old lady about her corns.

"Well, now," said the old lady, "I declare they hurt me mighty bad."

"I'll give you something to cure them right off."

"What is it ? I hope it ain't snails. I always hated snails since I was a baby, but I've heard say they are better for corns nor nothing else at all," etc., etc.

The old man was a revolutionary pensioner, Captain Patchin by name, and stouthearted, hale, and clever by nature. He is the owner of the place, but the house is occupied by another family-old man, old woman, and a numerous progeny of youthful giants and ogresses, but the whole "calculated on" removing to Illinois in the fall. There were visitors of the family also, the most conspicuous of whom was a little Canadian Frenchman, with his family, who professed himself a mighty adept at angling, but whose pretensions were found on trial to be greatly above his merits. The whole household presently gathered under the old portico, where stories of revolutionary campaigns, rattlesnakes, deadly beasts, and deadly diseases flew from mouth to mouth with awful rapidity. After a few rifle trials with the aforesaid youthful giants we took supper, and went on the lake after bass, with the Frenchman in our boat, and the young men following in their own.

We

had good success-Henry and I caught a dozen apiece, some of very large size, while the vainglorious Frenchman had to be content with one wretched perch. The

Captain to-night sent his dogs to the mountains in the care of a neighbor of his in hopes that a deer may be roused and driven to the lake in the morning. One of the children is playing with the tail of a rattlesnake, killed last night by one of the men in the middle of the road.

On

Friday, 22d. Left old Patchin's this morning, he having previously exhorted me to come and buy his place, which he says I may have for $5,000. A strong south wind compelled us to run toward Ty. We rowed six miles down the lake. -mountains less high than before, lake broad. In front lay a confused mass of precipitous mountains, apparently stretching across and barring the passage. the left was a hamlet at the foot of a range of hills, for which we steered, in order to put a letter into the post-office, which we knew to be there. We broke an oar when within about half a mile, and paddled to shore with great difficulty through a great surf which was dashing against the beach like the waves of the ocean. We found the post-office a neat little tavern, kept by one Garfield, entitled the Judge. He referred us to a carpenter who promised to make an oar forthwith, and worked six hours upon it, an interval which I spent chiefly in wandering about the country. I followed the course of a rocky brook, which came down a valley, with a little road running along its side, with an occasional cabin or mill, or narrow clearing breaking upon the forest. One old mill stood by the roadside where the stream tumbled in a broken line of foam over a mass of rock into a basin beneath, above which the building stood. Fantastic rocks, crowned with trees and shrubs, leaned above the basin and darkened the whirling waters below, while the dripping logs and walls of the mill on the other side, and the high rocks and waterfall in front, gave a sort of picturesque aspect to the place that I never hoped to see the companion of any Yankee edifice. Going on farther, I found other mills in abundance, and at last one which stood on the top of a deep descent of rock, flanked by the woods, down the surface of which the water came gliding in a thread so small that I wondered what had become of the stream I

had seen so large before. Listening, I heard the heavy plunging of water, apparently from under ground. I looked all about, and could see no channel; but the noise grew louder as I approached the woods on the left. I forced my way among the trees and came to the edge of a ravine not ten feet wide, but so deep that, leaning over, I could distinguish nothing but dark moss-grown rocks, while the noise of the water came up from the gulf with an appalling din. I went to the foot of the rocks and found the place where the water came glancing furiously out from the shelter of rocks and bushes, and following this guide by means of fallen logs and timbers, entered what seemed to be the mouth of a damp, gloomy cavern. The rocky walls of the ravine rose on each side some sixty or seventy feet, dripping with continual moisture. When I had got a little farther on, I could see a mass of rocks piled up in front, with the water tumbling over it in a sheet of foam. The cliffs leaning toward each other overhead, and the bushes that projected from them, rendered the place almost dark, though here and there the jagged rocks were il lumined by a faint stream of sunshine. Just above the cataract could be seen the old green timbers and wheels of a mill, built across the ravine. The whole very much resembled the Flume at Franconia.

Returned to Garfield's, and found there Mr. Gibbs, with his wife, the "vocalist." Presently the man appeared with the oar finished. White undertook to pay him with a Naumkeag Bank bill, the only bills he had.

"Don't know nothing about that money. Wait till Garfield comes, and he'll tell whether it's genuine or not."

"There's the paper," said I. "Look and see." He looked; all was right. "Well, are you satisfied?"

"How do I know but what that ere bill is counterfeit ? It has a sort of counterfeit look about it to my eyes. Deacon, what do you say to it?"

The Deacon put on his spectacles, held the bill to the light, turned it this way and that, tasted of it, and finally pronounced that, according to his calculation, it was good. But the carpenter was not contented.

"'Bijah, you're a judge of bills. What do you think?"

'Bijah, after a long examination, gave his opinion that it was counterfeit. All parties were beginning to wax wroth, when the Judge entered and decided that the bill was good.

We pushed from the beach and steered down the lake, passed some islands, and beheld in front of us two green mountains, standing guard over a narrow strait of dark waters between. Both were of solid granite, rising sheer from the lake, with a few stunted trees thinly clothing their nakedness. Behind each stretched away a long train of inferior mountains, like satellites of some gloomy despot. One of these mountains was the noted Roger's Slide, the other, almost as famous, Anthony's Nose, Jr. Both had witnessed in their day the passage of twenty vast armies in the strait between, and there was not an echo on either but had answered to the crack of rifles and screams of dying men. We skirted the base of the Nose-for which sentimental designation I could find no manner of reason— till we arrived opposite the perpendicular front of his savage neighbor. About a mile of water was between. We ran the boat ashore on a shelving rock, and looked for a camping-place among the precipices. We found, to our surprise, at the side of a steep rock, amid a growth of cedars and hemlocks, a little enclosure of logs, like a diminutive cabin without a roof. We made beds in it of hemlock boughs— there was just space enough—brought up our baggage and guns, ate what supper we had, and essayed to sleep. But we might as well have slept under a showerbath of melted iron. In that deep sheltered spot, bugs, mosquitoes and "no-seeems" swarmed innumerable. Our nets protected us from mosquitoes only. A million red-hot needles were gouged into hands, faces-everywhere. White cursed the woods and me for leading him into such a scrape. I laughed at him and the bugs as long as I could, but at last my philosophy gave way, and the utmost point of my self-command was to suffer in silence. It grew dark, and the wind came rushing along the side of the mountain, and stirring the trees over our heads with a lulling sound, and we were well

tired with the labor of the day, so we fell at last into a sort of unquiet and half-conscious doze, ever and anon interrupted by a muttered grumble or a motion to scratch some severely affected part. Late in the night I was awaked from this blissful state by sounds rather startling in that solitude the loud voices and shouts of men close by. I sat up and listened, but the moaning of the wind and the dash of the water against the shore prevented my distinguishing a syllable, until there came, louder than the rest, "Now then,damn it, pull for your lives; every stroke helps." In an instant it flashed across my bewildered brain that some scoundrels were making off with our boat, and I got clear of my blanket and ran down to the shore, first shaking White to wake him. All I could see through the darkness was that our boat was safe, and that another was drawn up beside it, when a man sprung up suddenly from the grass, with a muttered curse, and demanded who I was. We made mutual explanations. He had tried to run up the lake from Ty, with a companion in another boat, but his strength had failed against a strong contrary wind, and he had landed, leaving his friend, who had a long distance to go, to keep on.

The wind drove the bugs from the shore and made it a much more comfortable resting-place; so thither we adjourned and spread our blankets near the ragamuffin boatman. We built a little fire, and our new friend and White enjoyed a social pipe together. As the light fell on his matted hair; his grisly, unshorn countenance, haggard with drinking; and his battered and patched clothes, and then again flared high upon the cliffs and sayage trees, and streamed across the water, I thought that even that shore had seldom seen a more outlandish group-we in our blankets, he in his rags. He told us that the camp where we had been sleeping was made by a man last summer who lived here for the purpose of fishing. "He was a sort of a villain-like character," said our acquaintance; "he went and stole fish off my ground, damn him; and then again he killed his own son right down here in this place. The old man got drunk, and said he would have the boy over to this camp, and so he got him

in his old boat with him, though the boy's mother cried about it, and said she'd keep him at home, and the boy himself felt afeard to go. Well, the old fellow was so far gone that when he got to the landingplace—there, just where your boat is drawed up on the rock-he forgot he had his son with him, and ran his boat again the rock and tumbled himself out of it in such style that she overset, and pitched the boy into the deep water. The instant the old man heerd his son holler, it sobered him up in no time, but he nor the boy neither couldn't swim a mite, and so he stood on the rock and seed him drown, and then came over and telled the folks of it in the morning. That ere cured him of his tricks for one while, but within a week or two he has been up to them agin, and I ketched him on my fish grounds last Sunday -may I be d- -d if I didn't dress him."

With this dismal legend did our new friend beguile the hours of the night-watch. At length we all fell asleep and did not wake till day. The ragamuffin said he was hungry, on which we gave him a piece of bread, got all things on board our boat, and set out again for Patchin's, where we had left some linen to be washed. That morning was the most toilsome we have passed. The wind was dead against us; the waves ran with a violence I had never seen before except on the ocean. It required the full force of both arms to hold the boat on her course. If we slackened our efforts for a single moment, she would spin round and drive backward. We had about twelve miles to row under these agreeable auspices. "Well," said White, "you call this fun, do you? To be eaten by bugs all night, and work against head winds all day isn't according to my taste, whatever you may think of it."

"Are you going to back out?" said I. "Back out, yes; when I get into a bad scrape I back out of it as quickly as I can"

and so he went on with marvellous volubility to recount his grievances. Lake George, he called a "scrubby-looking place "-said there was no fishing in it— he hated camping, and would have no more of it-and he wouldn't live so for another week to save his life, etc. Verily what is one man's meat is another man's poison. What troubles me more than his treachery to our plans is his want of cash,

which will make it absolutely necessary to abandon our plan of descending through Maine. His scruples I trust to overcome in time.

We reached Patchin's at last, and were welcomed by the noble old veteran as cordially as if we were his children. We dined, and sat in his portico, listening to his stories. He is eighty-six. Three years ago he danced with great applause at a country party, and still his activity and muscular strength are fully equal to those of most men in the prime of life. He must once have been extremely handsome; even now his features are full and regular, and when he tells his stories he always sets his hat on one side of his head, and looks the very picture of an old warrior. He was several times prisoner. Once, when in Quebec, an English officer asked him, as he tells the story, "What's your name?" "Patchin." "What, HellHound Patchin?" says he.

At another time an officer struck him without any provocation but that of his being a rebel. Patchin sprang on him and choked him till he fainted, in the streets of Quebec. He served in the Indian campaigns of Butler and Brant about Fort Stanwix; at the recovery of Fort Ann, after it was taken by Burgoyne; was present when Sir John Johnson fled from the Mohawk with his property, and tells how narrowly that Tory made his escape from the pursuing party on Champlain. He wants us to come back and hear more of his stories.

We left him and his family and ran down the lake again, bathed at an island, and, White still continuing contumacious, I left him at Garfield's, and proceeded to camp by myself at an island two or three miles off. I hauled the boat on shore, and prepared to wash my pantaloons, an operation I could commit to no one else, since I should have to wander breechless in the interim. I put the breeks in the water to the windward of the island, and, having suitably pounded them down with stones, left them to the operation of the waves while I made ready my camp. Presently, taking them out and wringing them, I strung them on a tree hard by to dry, wrapped myself in my blanket and laid down. I read a book of White's as long as I could see. Two boats passed by me

as I lay, and the occupants turned a wondering gaze upon me, especially an old lady in green spectacles, whom her son was rowing down the lake. I slept comfortably and in the morning went back to Garfield's, where I found White, Gibbs, and his wife. The Judge was hospitable and kind, and we instantly planned a fishing party for the next day. To-day, being Sunday, I have stayed at home for the most part, written letters, journals, etc. The family are essentially "genteel" in the true sense of the word, the Judge a gentleman, his wife a lady, both polite by nature. The lady has a pretty flower garden-with no sunflowers in it. There is an old Irish gardener, whose department is managed in a most exemplary manner, and who has spent half the afternoon in expounding the superiority of the shamrock over the rose and the thistle. In short, the whole establishment is to the dwellings around it what Mr. Cushing's place is to a common farm.

Monday, July 25th. Breakfasted at nine, and went shooting with Gibbs-the ostensible object being a robin pie, the true one our own amusement. We made a great destruction among the small birds. The weapon I carried was used in the Revolution by Garfield's father. It was six feet long, slender, small bore, light breech of polished oak, flint lock. It had sent many a fatal charge of buckshot. In the afternoon went fishing with Gibbs and White, and witnessed the arrival of the great Nabob, Mr. Caldwell, the founder and owner of the village of that name, who comes here on a long-promised visit in a little barge of his own, with flags at prow and stern, and a huge box of wines for his private refreshment. To-night, the report of a piece from his boat gave the signal of his approach. Patrick, the Irishman, stood on the beach with the Judge's best gun and answered with a salute, for so it must be, or the great man would be displeased.

We were to have gone toward Ticonderoga to-night, but an easterly storm with rain prevents us, and compels us to remain here and sleep under a roof.

Tuesday, July 26th. The great man and his retinue occupied every nook and corner of the little tavern. Two of his satellites were quartered in the same room

with us and entertained us all night with snorings so diversified and so powerful that I wished myself at camp in spite of the storm. Garfield has a very good rifle, which he wanted to "swap " for mine. As his has some important advantages over mine, in size of bore, and is only inferior to it in roughness of mounting and in being rather worn by use, I agreed to make a trial with him, which occupied half the morning, and showed no marked superiority in either gun. I therefore declined the "swap." Left Garfield's at noon, and rowed down to Ticonderoga. Passed close under Roger's Slide, whose bare perpendicular sheets of granite, with their deep gullies and weather stains, and stunted shrubs in their crevices, present as dismal and savage an aspect as ever I saw, except at the White Mountains. Found the steamboat at the wharf at the outlet of the lake, and were welcomed on board by old Dick, whose acquaintance we made at Caldwell, who now composed her whole crew, the rest being seated under a tree on shore. Dick showed us his rattlesnakes again, and told us how a fellow once stole them, shut up in their box, mistaking the rattling for the sound of some valuable piece of machinery; but when he examined his prize and found the truth of the case, he dropped the box in the woods and ran for his life. We consigned our boat to the Captain to be carried back to Caldwell and got on a stage we found at the wharf, which carried us to the village of Ty. It is a despicable manufacturing place, straggling and irregular-mills, houses, and heaps of lumber-situated in a broad valley with the outlet of Lake George running through the middle-a succession of fierce rapids, with each its sawmill. I bespake me here a pair of

breeches of a paddy tailor, who asked me if I did not work on board the steamboat, a question which aggravated me not a little. I asked a fellow the way to the

fort. Well," said he, "I've heerd of such a place, seems to me, but I never seen it, and couldn't tell ye where it be.” "You must be an idiot," thought I; but I found his case by no means singular. At last, I got the direction and walked about two miles before I saw the remains of a high earthen parapet with a ditch running through a piece of wood for a great distance. This, I suppose, was the place where the French beat off Abercrombie's army. Farther on, in a great plain scantily covered with wood, were breastworks and ditches in abundance, running in all directions, which I took for the work of Amherst's besieging armies. Still farther, were two or three square redoubts. At length, mounting a little hill, a cluster of gray, ruined walls, like an old château, with mounds of earth and heaps of stones about them, appeared crowning an eminence in front. When I reached them, I was astonished at the extent of the ruins. Thousands of men might have encamped in the All around were ditches of such depth, that it would be death to jump down, with walls of masonry sixty feet high. Ty stands on a promontory, with Champlain on one side and the outlet of Lake George on the other; his cannon commanded the passage completely. At the very extremity is the oldest part of the fortress a huge mass of masonry with walls sinking sheer down to the two lakes. All kinds of weeds and vines are clambering over them. The senseless blockheads in the neighborhood have stolen tons and tons of the stone to build their walls and houses of may they meet their reward.

area.