CHAPTER XIII
THE ADIRONDACKS
Whoever passes through the Green mountains and arrives at Burlington in the evening of a fair day will he rewarded by one of the most beautiful views of natural scenery the world has to offer. The outlook from the hilltop here is enchanting. Looking westward you see the beautiful expanse of Lake Champlain, dotted with numerous islands that stretch away to the purple wall of the Adirondacks, whose summits are outlined by a bright golden light which slowly ascends and diffuses along the horizon as if striving to linger around the loveliness below. The sun disappears, leaving an ocean of flame where he passes, and the fleecy clouds which swim in the ether look down at their images in the lake. Here you behold the Green mountains, showing majestically against the sky. They are clothed in soft blue veils, as lovely as any that Italian mountains can boast. The highest peaks of the range, Mount Mansfield and Camel's Hump, thrust their outlines like purple silhouettes against their glowing background.
William Dean Howells, standing with a friend on the shore of the
Bay of Naples, remarked that he considered one scene in the
world more beautiful than that upon which they were gazing—Lake
Champlain and the Adirondacks, as seen from Burlington.
Morning came bright and clear; a cool breeze waved the clinging foliage of birch and elm, rippling the lake near the shore and tossing the waves far out on its bosom, which gleamed white along their crests. This was the real Lake Champlain, for it is a very turbulent mass of water and rarely presents a picture of such calm and quiet beauty as we beheld on the preceding evening. Numerous islands, "each fair enough to have keen the Garden of Eden," seen through the level rays of the morning sun, formed a glorious veil of color. Dark green arbor vitae trees grew near their edges; nearer still the elm and willows flung down their lighter masses of foliage to the water, and birch gleamed silvery white against their shadowy background.
"After the French had built Fort Saint Anne on Isle la Motte a party of men went out in search of game. They crossed the lake in a southwesterly direction and were surprised by a band of Mohawk Indians, who took some of the white men prisoners, and killed Captain de Traversy and Sieur de Chasy." The place where they were killed has since been known as Chasy's landing. We crossed a long causeway, which led to the landing, where we took the ferry across to Chasy. The first auto on the boat was from Massachusetts, followed by "another Nash" from New Hampshire; then Ohio filled the middle space of the boat, and was followed by a horse and buggy; as neither bore a license, we could not tell the state from which they came. The distance to Chasy was about one mile, and we were soon on our way to Plattsburg.
Fields of ripening wheat, oats, alfalfa and buckwheat, all divided by stone fences into squares and triangles, began to appear. Meadows in which Holstein cattle were grazing dotted the low ranges of foothills that spread away until lost in blue distance.
Between the Adirondack mountains in New York state and the Green mountains of Vermont on the shore of Lake Champlain, in the heart of Champlain valley, lies the historic town of Plattsburg. It is noted in recent years as the home of the "Plattsburg Idea," the movement for universal military training inaugurated by Major General Leonard Wood, through the establishment at Plattsburg in the summer of 1915 of the first summer camp of military instruction for the regular army. It was noon when we arrived here, and we found that quite a few had adopted the idea, for a long line of hungry khaki-clad men were awaiting their turn at the mess hall.
The first battle of Lake Champlain occurred near here as early as 1609, when Samuel de Champlain, with two other white men, led the Algonquins and Hurons in an attack upon their enemies, the Mohawks. A British and American naval engagement, October 11, 1776, resulted in victory for the British. September 11, 1814, the last naval battle between English speaking peoples was fought here, known as the Battle of Plattsburg Bay.
Eight miles south of Plattsburg is located the Alaskan silver fox farm, which is the largest in the United States. This farm comprises forty acres and contains one hundred silver foxes. It is open to visitors from July to September.
The road leading to this farm passes through one of most picturesque of all the Adirondack regions. As we made our way across the beautiful Ausable valley we beheld an enchanting scene spread out around us. Green meadows sloped up to wooded heights and fields of grain like golden lakes flashed in the sunlight. The hills became more rugged as we wound our way among them. Farmers were loading hay in the meadows, through which streams glistened as they slipped over their sinuous stone- strewn bottoms. Groups of cattle stood knee-deep in the meadow brooks, or rested beneath the shade of elms and willows. In the center of the picture, disclosing its bends and reaches, Ausable river flowed on its way to Lake Champlain. In places its waters were almost hidden by grape vines that clambered and twisted around bush and tree, forming "Laocoon groups" in which they were hopelessly intertwined.
Far beyond the valley sharp summits and irregular ridges printed their bold outlines on the sky. Nearer were farms, groves, and hills, with now and then a placid lake which caught the color of the sky and mirrored it back to us. But our eyes were fastened upon the grand summits and pinnacles that rose dreamy and silent through the summer haze, beckoning us on to those enchanted realms we were soon to behold. Old White Face reared his colossal pyramid above the woods and waved his dull white banner from afar. Soon we entered higher hills, where giant maples threw their cooling shadows across the road and a faint breeze made the balsam boughs breathe and sigh. The road became more sinuous and the hills more grand and imposing. Over the notched summits of the clustered peaks the outlines of thunder heads, luminous and edged with gold, appeared through the blue haze.
At length a broad summit rising against another one still taller, broke suddenly above the foliage where the amber colored falls of Ausable river saluted us. We were in the midst of one of the finest pieces of natural scenery in the eastern United States. We were only fifteen miles from Lake Champlain, but what a change! Here in Ausable chasm we beheld one of the many natural wonders of the Adirondack region. The Ausable river at this point flows through a tortuous channel two miles in length. A rustic walk with many bridges and stairways has been built along the chasm, passing all the wild beauty spots in the gorge. The silvery babble of water passing over rocks, mingled with the gurgling liquid notes of the woodthrush.
The sides of the canyon in places were vast streets of ferns, moss and vines, which resembled cataracts of varying shades of green or great pieces of hanging tapestry inwrought with rare designs of woodland flowers. We could stay in so romantic a spot many days, for in a short time we had seen paintings; read poems, heard the silvery tongues of running brooks, and ringing texts from the sermons in stone. We only tarried long enough to pass up the gorge and view Rainbow falls, which drop seventy feet to the rock below. To the opposite bank from this we made our way and were amply repaid by a commanding view of the tumbling waters. The rays of the sun falling upon this sheet of water produced an exquisite effect. Here from the thick-growing shrubbery as we watched the amber waters concentrate for their fall, and break into silken streamers of irised spray, we knew they had been appropriately named "Rainbow Falls."
We recalled many a cascade among the Alps, where from remote heights the small avalanches of snowy water form comet-like streamers of rarest beauty. We saw again the shimmering rainbow mist of others more remote, whose murmurs died away in the gloomy depth of some Italian forest.
Soon we were gazing at distant peaks that had such a savage aspect as to again call forth comparisons. Balsam fir, pine, hemlock, maple, birch, and beech were the principal forest trees. Lakes gleamed like silver mirrors in the lap of wild rugged hills that stretched far away. We saw huge rocks that had fallen from above as if shattered in the original upheaval of the range, presenting sharp, forcible outlines and rugged facets of shadow so striking in comparison with the flowing outlines of the Catskills or Blue Ridge. The road wound back and forth as it climbed the stony wilderness and soon unfolded to our view a picture of utter desolation. We had just emerged from a stretch of road lined as far as the eye could see on either side with ash, hemlock, birch, beech, and balsam fir. Here we rested among cool shadows, where beautifully fronded ferns rose all about. Weary pedestrians had fallen asleep beneath their cooling shadows and groups of boy scouts pitched their tents along this highway.
Our eyes fell upon a sign that read like this: "A careless smoker caused the fire that destroyed thousands of acres of these forests. You love the forests. Help keep them green by being careful about your fires." Looking forward we beheld a vast and awful scene of desolation. Miles and miles on either side of the road stretched that sea of blackened stumps and charred logs where once the evergreens rose heavenward with all their wealth of whispering leaves. Blackened stubs rose all around as if they were huge exclamation points or pointing fingers of accusation at the carelessness and thoughtlessness of one individual.
Carelessness! How that word rang in our ears as we journeyed through this lonely region, with all its grandeur and beauty gone! Here we realized the kindly and beneficent influence of streams and trees upon mountain scenery. True, mountains may be grand without forests, but it is the grandeur of death we behold in the vast untrodden fields of the show-clad Alps. Forests and streams give life, fragrance, and beauty to those rough forms as a pure soul adds beauty to the countenance of man. Only heated waves of air rose from the fiery rocks and road around us, whose shimmering lines made a fit perspective to such a scene. No mossy rock where one could sit and listen to the singing birds; no ancient trees through which the fragrant west wind could sing its songs of rest and contentment; no purifying river where it was once so pleasant for man to linger before going back to the heat and smoke of the city; all because of one man's carelessness. How much of sorrow and crime is in that word; what failures, what wrecks of humanity stranded along the steep precipice of that mountain.
Who would even want to climb those blackened summits? The elevation would only make the view more terrible. The thousands of travellers who pass this way were all affected by these unsightly monuments to one man's carelessness, proving that "Man liveth not to himself alone."
As we emerged from that scene of heat and desolation, a prayer trembled upon every lip and its only theme was, "Lord, help us to be careful."
What an awful spectacle that vast stretch of burning forest must have presented! We shall quote from Headley, who witnessed such a scene in these mountains: "One night the whole mountain was wrapped in a fiery mantle, a mighty bosom of fire from which rose waving columns and lofty turrets of flame. Trees a hundred feet high and five and six and eight feet in circumference, were on fire from the root to the top. Vast pyramids of flame, now surging in eddies of air that caught them, now bending as if about to yield the struggle, then lifting superior to the foe and dying, martyr-like, in the vast furnace. Shorn of their glory, their flashing, trembling forms stood crisping and writhing in the blaze till, weary of their long suffering, they threw themselves with a sudden and hurried sweep on the funeral pile around. From the noble pine to the bending sprout, the trees were aflame, while the crackling underbrush seemed a fiery network cast over the prostrate forms of the monarchs of the forest. When the fire caught a dry stump, it ran up the huge trunk like a serpent, and coiling around the withered branches, shot out its fiery tongue as if in mad joy over the raging element below; while ever and anon came a crash that reverberated far away in the gorges—the crash of falling trees, at the overthrow of which there went up a cloud of sparks and cinders and ashes. Sweeping along its terrible path, the tramp of that conflagration filled the air with an uproar like the bursting of billows on a rocky shore."
Across a narrow valley gigantic boulders seemed to have accumulated and formed masses that appeared to be slowly creeping downward. Farther away we beheld the serrated mountains breaking into the wildest confusion of pinnacles, which rose above the forest and relieved their masses of vivid green tints like ruined castles along the Rhine, clothing them with an atmosphere of age. Far up as the eye could reach, the broken rocks were piled in huge chaos. "Here as your eye sweeps over these fragments of a former earthquake, your imagination recalls that remote period when the mountains were split like lightning- riven oaks, and the great peaks swayed like trees in a blast and the roar of a thousand storms rolled away from the yawning gulf, into which precipices and forests went down with a deafening crash as of a falling world."
The rugged sides of mountains often gave us views on almost as grand a scale as that of the Alps. Only there, height above height, rise those rocky ramparts where snowy cascades leap hundreds of feet, then leap again where those chaotic and fantastic rocks and immeasurable sweep of terraced hills stretch away like another world. You will ever remember the Gorge du Loup with its seven-arched viaduct and stream of vivid green and the white foam that pours between its piers. On the road which leads from Nice to the town of Grasse, where are located the famous perfumeries, you will pass orange orchards, flower farms, and charming meadows with patches of wild broom lying iii vast sheets of gold. The dark gray rocks are filled with pits and holes, and when viewed from a distance resemble the homes of the cliff dwellers. The views here are frowning and awesome.
As you near the Gorge du Loup you will see Gourdon perched far, far up on its rocky throne, whose gray, weatherbeaten buildings give to this wild scenery an infinite charm. You are sure that you never can reach this far-distant town, but are agreeably surprised when you gaze at the vastness of the gray, sterile mountain sides you have left. Far below you the terraced vineyards rise in emerald waves against their silvery background of century-old olives.
Yet we have experienced almost as strong emotions of vagueness, terror, sublimity, strength, and beauty while gazing upon the vast panorama of groups and clusters of chaotic peaks that stretch away in almost endless variety of form in confused and disorderly arrangement. Here almost interminable forests are only interrupted with beautiful lakes that now and then peep from their hiding places in vast expanse of forest-crowned wilderness. But here is beauty as well as grandeur. "Those three- months European travelers who hurry through our lowlands by steam and perhaps take a night boat up the Hudson, Lake Champlain, or St. Lawrence and presume to belittle our natural scenery, are not the most reliable persons in the world."
Let them go to the summit of Mount Marcy on a clear day and look out over the magnificent panorama spread out before them, and they will not say we have no natural scenery worth viewing in the Atlantic States from Canada to New Orleans, except Niagara and Burlington. Here in every direction countless summits pierce the sky, and the unnumbered miles of forests that clothe with green garments the ridges and slopes of this vast wilderness, who can ever forget them? How wonderful are these wild and rugged scenes, still fresh from the hand of God! Call us idle triflers if you will, but we shall ever try to read the messages from these stone pages from the book of God, where all day long the breezes whisper messages fuller of meaning than any lines from the hand of man.
But to return to the view from the mountain peak, glorious, indeed, is the scene spread out below you from Mount Marcy. How unlike the Alps is the prospect you obtain from its summit. True, you will see no snow-capped peaks and shining glaciers, but what a chaos of gray and green mountains extend as far as the eye can reach.
One writer gives this vivid description of the scene that meets the enraptured gaze of the traveler here: "It looked as if the Almighty had once set this vast earth rolling like the sea; and then, in the midst of its maddest flow, bid all the gigantic billows stop and congeal in their places, and there they stood, just as He froze them grand and gloomy. There was the long swell, and there the cresting, bursting billow—and there, too, the deep, black, cavernous gulf." Those in our country who think only the Alps and Apennines can inspire awe and veneration should force their way through thick fir, dwarf evergreen and deep moss to the top of Mount Marcy, where it pushes its rocky forehead high into the heavens. Here in these beautiful wild regions you will find lakes over whose waters you may glide in a canoe, whose forest-clad shores seem never to have been marred by the axe of civilization. Here as the sun sinks to repose amid these purple mountains, and the last rays of light on their waters seem like sheets of fluid gold, and the lonely cry of the loon breaks the solitude, you too will feel that you do not need to go to Europe for natural mountain beauty when such glorious scenes lie spread out before you.
We shall never forget our first impression of Lake Colder, perfectly embosomed among the gigantic mountains which rise it all their wild and savage grandeur around it. What absolute freedom and absence of conventional forms are found here by him who loves Nature as God made it.
Toward Canada stretches the vast expanse of Lake Champlain with its numerous islands, while along the eastern horizon the distant Green mountains lift their granite summits, at whose bases the charming city of Burlington lies dreamily silent beneath its smoky veil. Far away to the north and west repose many lakes. Some lie dark and silent beneath the shadows of their guarding mountains, others reflect the shy above in silvery blue sheen as if to cheer this vast and lonely solitude. How your thoughts reach out toward the Infinite as the wondrous vision unrolls before you! This interminable mass of different shades of green and gray presents one of the most beautiful scenes your eye ever gazed upon.
No wonder Christ gave to the world his glorious lessons from a mountain top; in which he urged the disciples to be worthy examples to their fellow men. Up in these everlasting hills, where He has manifested His wonderful power and left a symbol of His omnipotence, we can draw nearer the Creator than elsewhere. How puny, how insignificant seems man and all his works out here in these unbounded solitudes! "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help," chants the psalmist. Wandering among these glorious hills that rise above the distant horizon, or stretch away in endless majesty from you, as your heart swells over the thrilling scene, you too shall feel the presence of a great and mighty power, and realize in part what the psalmist meant.
We passed through the town of Schroon Lake, situated along a picturesque sheet of water bearing the same name, which lies to the west of Kayaderrossera range. It has been compared by some to Lake Como. On one side a bold mountain rears its green wall, while the shores slope down to it as if eager to behold their lovely forms in its crystal water. In places it is very narrow and its windings seem more like a great river than a lake. It is fed by Schroon river, along which are Schroon falls. Numerous tents peeped from their guarding trees along its banks. How we rejoiced in the refreshing shade of the forests and vistas, revealing this "gleaming pearl set in emeralds," as some one has appropriately called it. Its water is very pure and cold, and fishermen will find ample compensation for all the time they spend here, even though few fish are caught. Its crystal waters are dotted with green islands.
The name Schroon was given this lake by the early French settlers at Crown Point in honor of Madam Scarron, the widow of a celebrated French dramatist and novelist, Paul Scarron. Along the margin of this lake we saw a Sunday-school teacher who had brought his class of boys for an outing. What lessons these growing lads will imbibe from the beauty of Nature around them. How can they help but think of the Creator when they dwell so near the primal source of life. The crystal waters of the lake will teach them purity, the leaves of the trees will rustle messages of self-denial, and the majestic mountains will speak to them of endurance and courage, a religion which dwells in Nature until they, "like Moses, will see in the bushes the radiant Deity and know they are treading on holy ground."
Wonderfully rich in lakes is this charming mountain region. No other country is blessed with greater numbers of lovely lakes than North America. Lake Placid, Echo, Loon, and a host of others were encircled by green hills with sturdy evergreens, graceful elms and scattered tents that framed them pleasantly.
Here amidst such sylvan beauty, where the air is rife with the fragrance of birch and balsam, as you gaze at the Adirondacks that lift their startling cliffs into the air, or farther along the horizon stand bathed in a radiant glow, while a gold tangle of sunset glitters among the white birch trees or casts a soft sheen like the tints on a mourning dove's neck—pray tell me, have you ever seen anything fairer than your own placid lakes?
On such evenings as these your thoughts will become as serene as the lake and ripple now and then with a thousand vague, sweet visions like its placid surface when dimpled by the leap of a trout.
Morning here brings scenes almost as fair. Singing brooks flash like silver across green valleys, the rays of the sun fall upon the yellow and white birch boles that look mellow and rich as "pillars of amber and gleaming pearl." The rocky ledges are covered with lichens, ferns and mosses; myriads of campanula look blue-eyed towards a bluer sky; and out over the lake white- bellied swallows write poems of grace and beauty on the air. The frescoes of dawn touch the tips of the eastern ranges whose stern gray summits break into rosy flame.
We climbed to the summit of a towering mountain and a glorious prospect met our view. Looking out over the billows of verdure that seemed to be rolling down the mountains, we saw Lake Placid, with its green islands, like a lovely painting in the quiet morning light. Far as the eye can reach the forest-crowned mountains stretched, now surging into summits, now sinking into valleys, holding in their embrace the lovely Saranac lakes that gleamed like the flashing of distant shields. Far beyond to the south like a glittering mirror lay Tupper's lake, while farther away the pointed pinnacles of the Adirondacks thrust themselves boldly into the sky. Looking northward we beheld a lovely cultivated region with meadows and grain fields. We also caught sight of several towns, and glimpses of dark forests between the billowy folds of other ranges, that melted into the sky. Like a narrow band of light, Lake Champlain was just visible, while the faint summits of the Green mountains with their misty veils seemed like far, thin shadows.