IV. SAIL DOWN THE LAKE TO BLUFF POINT
The first stop was at Port Henry, one of the five gateways to the Adirondacks and one of the large iron-ore ports of the country. This picturesque village, nestling under the foothills of the Adirondacks, the home of Commissioner Walter C. Witherbee and Hon. Frank S. Witherbee, overlooks the lake, the Champlain Memorial Lighthouse and historical Chimney Point on the Vermont shore. In this town is located the principal office of Witherbee, Sherman & Company, extensive iron producers and donors to the State of New York of the lands on which are situated the Crown Point Forts. It has a public library and other public buildings, churches, etc. The steamer then proceeded northward past Westport and Essex, attractive summer resorts on the west shore of the lake and also past Thompson’s Point, Cedar Beach and other resorts on the east shore of the lake to Burlington, which rises above the blue waters of the lake in some such manner as does Naples above the blue Mediterranean. It has its beautiful semicircular bay with its two arms, projecting far out into the lake, similar to the beautiful bay of Naples with its Sorrento and Posilipo, projecting far out into the sea. It has its University, as has Naples, which has been a center of learning and culture for many years. It rises less precipitously and with more uniform gradation from the margin of the lake to the college campus, where the University buildings crown the summit as does the castle of St. Elmo the city of Naples. Its streets and avenues are broader and better shaded than are those of Naples, but it has many points of resemblance, which are suggestive of that rare Neapolitan fascination not found elsewhere. Instead of the active and ever-threatening Vesuvius, there rises in the background superbly beautiful Mt. Mansfield silhouetted against the deep blue eastern sky. The commanding view from the elevation of the University of Vermont to the eastward and especially to the westward across the lake toward the rugged Adirondacks, rising precipitously from the water’s edge to the sky line, is such as to enable one to survey the width as well as something of the length of the valley and appreciate its pictorial grandeur. As the sun gilds the sky-pointing peaks and fills the valleys with rosy light, except where drifting clouds cast their shadows athwart the mountain ranges and as the placid waters of the lake reflect the overarching azure sky, in an atmosphere—the clarity of which like that on the summit of Salvatore accentuates nature’s beauties,—one is reminded that the Champlain valley presents many views worthy the brush of a Turner, a Corot or a Cormon. In the poem on “Lake Champlain” by S. S. Cutting, D. D., will be found the following:
Oh matchless splendors! never sung nor told,
Now golden purple, now empurpled gold!
O’er mount and plain the heavens their tints diffuse
And tinge the waves with iridescent hues.
And now, when slowly fades departing day,
The moon, full-orbed, walks her celestial way,
And bathing all things in her silver light,
Prolongs the beauty through the slumbering night.
The “Ticonderoga” pointed westward north of the Four Brothers, where Edward Hatch, Jr., of Lord & Taylor of New York City maintains a hatchery for breeding and rearing lake gulls and also easterly of Port Kent, one of the gateways to the Adirondacks. On the right were seen some of the beautiful islands described by Samuel Champlain. One of these was for many years the abode of that sweet bard of Grand Isle County, Vt., the Rev. Orville G. Wheeler, who once sang in this wise:
Vermont, thy mountain breezes erst have fanned
The brow of warrior bold, of statesman sage,
And yet the poet’s mystic waving wand
Will charm to life thy bright historic page;
Ah such will live, the good, the great, the brave,
Will live in grateful hearts, if not in song,
Their hallowed deeds will never find a grave,
Although unsung their fame may slumber long.
The steamer passed Valcour, where occurred one of the principal naval engagements of the Revolution, in which Benedict Arnold distinguished himself for his daring and for his adroit escape in the night from the enemy. The Commissioners and their guests were landed at Bluff Point and took rooms in the new Hotel Champlain, which was built on the site of the former Hotel Champlain, burned in the winter of 1910. Its commodious apartments, broad verandas and commanding outlook over Cumberland Bay and the lake were admiringly appreciated after the strenuous day’s exercises at Crown Point Forts and the ride down the lake.
CHAMPLAIN HOTEL, BLUFF POINT, JULY 6, 1912.
The rosy-fingered dawn was eloquent with the loud, rich, skilfully modulated song of the thrasher and the melody of the many birds that frequent the tree-clad slopes along the shores of the lake. Nature has with profusion bestowed her inexhaustible wealth of beauty in and about Lake Champlain. The site of the new hotel at Bluff Point is one of the places where this may be seen to advantage. As one gazes on the blue waters of the lake, with its picturesque islands, stretching far away toward the Vermont shores and over to the sloping hillsides that lead up to the majestic Green Mountains in the distance and then to the towering Adirondacks that wall in the lake on the west, he is quite apt to compare the scene with that unfolded to the tourist, who looks out from Locarno on the expanse of the blue waters of Lago Maggiore with its charming islands and the encircling mountains, crowned with villas and historic castles, “a perfect efflorescence of loveliness.” The grandeur and sublimity of the Alpine scene is to some extent compensated for by the broader expanse of undulating waters, the larger sweep of productive valleys and verdant slopes, “set with the homes of men,” breathing the air of freedom, whose heritage is liberty under law.
Amid such scenes the words of William Watson occur to one,
“ * * * * * *
Beauty, whose voice is earth and sea and air,
* * * * * *
Who reigneth, and her throne is everywhere.”