Our party, on this occasion, consisted of three—Peter Hummel, a bark-gatherer and myself. I had chosen these fellows for the expedition, because of their friendship for me and their willingness to go; and I resolved to give them a “treat” at the “Grand Hotel,” which the natives of this region look upon as a kind of paradise. You are aware, I suppose, reader, that the Mountain House is an establishment vying in its style of accommodations with the best of hotels. Between it and the Hudson, there is, during the summer, a semi-daily line of stages, and it is the transient resort of thousands, who visit it for the novelty of its location as well as for the surrounding scenery. The edifice itself stands on a cliff, within a few feet of the edge, and commands a prospect extending from Long Island Sound to the White Mountains. The first time I visited this spot, I spent half the night at my bed-room window, watching the fantastic performances of a thunder-storm far below me, which made the building tremble like a ship upon a reef, while the sky above was cloudless, and studded with stars. Between this spot and South Peak, “there’s the High Peak and the Round Top, which lay back, like a father and mother among their children, seeing they are far above all the other hills.”
But to proceed. Coarsely and comically dressed as we were, we made a very unique appearance as we paraded into the office of the hotel. I met a few acquaintances there to whom I introduced my comrades, and in a short time each one was spinning a mountain legend to a crowd of delighted listeners. In due time I ushered them into the dining-hall, where was enacted a scene which can be better imagined than described; the fellows were completely out of their element, and it was laughable in the extreme, to see them stare and hear them talk, as the servants bountifully helped them to the turtle soup, ice-cream, charlotte russe and other fashionable dainties.
About the middle of the afternoon we commenced descending the beautiful mountain-road leading towards the Hudson. In the morning there had been a heavy shower, and a thousand happy rills attended us with a song. A delightful nook on this road is pointed out as the identical spot where Rip Van Winkle slept away a score of his life. I reached home in time to spend the twilight hour in my own room, musing upon the much-loved mountains. I had but one companion, and that was a whippoorwill, which nightly comes to my window-sill, as if to tell me a tale of its love, or of the woods and solitary wilderness.
But the most unique and interesting of my fishing adventures remains to be described. I had heard a great deal about the good fishing afforded by the lake already mentioned, and I desired to visit it and spend a night upon its shore. Having spoken to my friend Hummel, and invited a neighbor to accompany us, whom the people had named “White Yankee,” the noontide hour of a pleasant day found us on our winding march: and such a grotesque appearance as we made was exceedingly amusing. The group was mostly animated when climbing the steep and rocky ravines which we were compelled to pass through. There was Peter, “long, lank, and lean,” and wild in his attire and countenance as an eagle of the wilderness, with an axe in his hand, and a huge knapsack on his back, containing our provisions and utensils for cooking. Next to him followed White Yankee, with three blankets lashed upon his back, a slouched white hat on his head, and nearly half a pound of tobacco in his mouth. Crooked-legged withal, and somewhat sickly was this individual, and being wholly unaccustomed to this kind of business, he went along groaning, grunting, and sweating, as if he was “sent for and didn’t want to come.” In the rear tottered along your humble friend, dear reader, with a gun upon his shoulder, a powder-horn and shot-pouch at his side, cowhide boots on his feet, and a cap on his head, his beard half an inch long, and his flowing hair streaming in the wind.
We reached our place of destination about five o’clock, and halted under a large impending rock, which was to be our sleeping place. We were emphatically under the “shadow of a rock in a weary land.” Our first business was to build a fire, which we did with about one cord of green and dry wood. Eighty poles were then cut, to which we fastened our lines. The old canoe in the lake was bailed out, and, having baited our hooks with the minnows we had brought with us, we planted the poles in about seven feet of water all around the lake shore. We then prepared and ate our supper, and awaited the coming on of night. During this interval I learned from Peter the following particulars concerning the lake. It was originally discovered by a hunter named Shew. It is estimated to cover about fifty acres, and in the centre to be more than two hundred feet in depth. For my part, however, I do not believe it contains over five acres, though the mountains which tower on every side but one, are calculated to deceive the eye; but, as to its depth, I could easily fancy it to be bottomless, for the water is remarkably dark. To the number of trout in this lake there seems to be no end. It is supposed they reach it, when small, through Sweetwater Brook, when they increase in size, and multiply. It also abounds in green and scarlet lizards, which are a serious drawback to the pleasures of the fastidious angler. I asked Peter many questions concerning his adventures about the lake, and he told me that the number of “harmless murders” he had committed here was about three hundred. In one day he shot three deer; at another time a dozen turkeys; at another twenty ducks; one night an old bear; and again half-a-dozen coons; and on one occasion annihilated a den of thirty-seven rattlesnakes.
At nine o’clock we lighted a torch, and went to examine our lines; and it was my good fortune to haul out not less than forty-one trout, weighing from one to two pounds a-piece. These we put into a spring of very cold water, which bubbled from the earth a few paces from our camping place, and then retired to repose. Branches of hemlock constituted our couch, and my station was between Peter and White Yankee. Little did I dream, when I first saw these two bipeds, that I should ever have them for my bed-fellows; but who can tell what shall be on the morrow? My friends were in the land of Nod in less than a dozen minutes after we had retired; but it was difficult for me to go to sleep in the midst of the wild scene which surrounded me. There I lay, flat on my back, a stone and my cap for a pillow, and wrapped in a blanket, with my nose exposed to the chilly night air. And what pictures did my fancy conjure up, as I looked upon the army of trunks around me, glistening in the firelight. One moment they were a troop of Indians from the spirit-land, come to revisit again the hunting-grounds of their fathers, and weeping because the white man had desecrated their soil; and again I fancied them to be a congress of wild animals, assembled to try, execute, and devour us, for the depredations our fellows had committed upon their kind during the last one hundred years. By and by a star peered out upon me from between the branches of a tree, and my thoughts ascended heavenward. And now my eyes twinkled and blinked in sympathy with the star, and I was a dreamer.
An hour after the witching time of night, I was startled from my sleep by a bellowing halloo from Peter, who said it was time to examine the lines again. Had you heard the echoes which were then awakened, far and near, you would have thought yourself in enchanted land. But there were living answers to that shout, for a frightened fox began to bark, an owl commenced its horrible hootings, a partridge its drumming, and a wolf its howl. There was not a breeze stirring, and
“Naught was seen in the vault on high
But the moon and the stars and a cloudless sky,
And a river of white in the welkin blue.”