GIANT FALLS, AUSABLE CHASM.
Having feasted our sight, and caught the spirit of inspiration that haunts the romantic retreats of Havana Glen, we departed northward and took a train on the Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad for Clayton, situated on the south bank of the St. Lawrence River, near where it receives the flow from Ontario Lake. At this point steamer was taken for a ride among the Thousand Islands to Ogdensburg, a trip more charming than our remembrance of love’s first dream. This part of the river is broken into many channels that meander through avenues worn in the granite which confines its course. The Thousand Islands is no misnomer, for they seem to be beyond number, scattered like a myriad of emeralds, with deep water between, and yet so close together that they may almost reach hands across the breach. Every islet is a dome of rock, ground into symmetrical shape by glacial action long ago, then covered by a sediment from the river sufficient to support a profuse vegetation. The Canada pine is conspicuous, lifting its scraggy head to a great height, and pointing its stout branches in every direction, a stately figure among the brushwood that surrounds it.
Many of the islands are only little green dots scarcely large enough for a fairy’s bower, while others are of considerable size, occupied by lovely villas, the resort of those wealthy enough to own beautiful summer houses where the air is fragrant with sweetest odors, and the gamest fish invite the enthusiastic angler.
Departing from Ogdensburg, one of our party proceeded to Montreal, by way of Ottawa, to photograph some Canada scenery in the vicinity of those cities, while the other took train for Chateaugay, each mapping out for himself the work to be done in the regions which he had chosen to picture. Chateaugay is in the extreme northeastern part of New York and about thirty miles from Lake Champlain. A river of the same name flows by the place and through some scenery which is almost matchless in marvelous grandeur, probably excelling in extraordinary cleavage that found in Watkin’s and Havana Glens. Giant Gorge is one of the first tremendous rents which we observe in the chasms of Chateaugay River, but several other precipitously walled cañons occur between that point and Chateaugay Lake, twenty miles below, where the Adirondack Mountain region begins, with its wilderness of untamable savagery, as wild now as when its rugged solitudes were first disturbed by an invading Indian seeking the game that there abounded. This darksome haunt of nature is cleft by the Saranac, Raquette, Boquet and Ausable Rivers, and in these gloomy recesses whence the day is dispelled are the lake sources of the noble Hudson.
BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, HAVANA GLEN, NEW YORK.—Havana Glen is three miles south of Watkins, and is properly a continuation of the latter. The cliffs are scarcely so vertical, but the general formation is practically the same, and similar means are provided for viewing its wonders to advantage. Bridal Veil Falls are Havana’s chief attraction, and they merit the distinction. The water at this point falls thirty feet down a very steep slope, in a great column, which, contracted at the plunge, spreads as it flows over a succession of terraces until it dashes into the deep stream below with a sullen roar.
ELBOW FALLS, AUSABLE CHASM.