PLATTSBURG AND ITS NAVAL BATTLE.
Northward from Ausable River, Lake Champlain contains a number of large islands. Valeur Island is near the New York shore, and in the narrow channel separating them, in 1776, a desperate naval contest was fought between Arnold and Carleton, resulting in the defeat of the Americans. Beyond are the large islands of Grand Isle, South Hero and North Hero. Standing in an admirable position on Bluff Point, a high promontory on the western shore, is the great Hotel Champlain, elevated two hundred feet above the lake. To the north the Saranac River, coming from the southwest, flows out of the Adirondacks through its red sandstone gorge into Cumberland Bay, and at its mouth is the pleasant town of Plattsburg, having a population of seven thousand. The broad peninsula of Cumberland Head, projecting far to the southward into the lake, encloses the bay in front of the town. Plattsburg's greatest fame comes from its battle and Commodore McDonough's victory in 1814. The earliest settler was a British army officer, one Count de Fredenburgh, who built a sawmill at a fall near the mouth of the Saranac; but he was made way with early in the Revolution, and many have been the startling tales since told of his ghostly figure, in red coat and knee-breeches, stalking about the ruins of the old mill at Fredenburgh Falls. After the war, New York State confiscated the property and gave it to Zephaniah Platt and his associates, who established the town, and in 1785 rebuilt the mill. Plattsburg had become a place of so much importance that in the War of 1812-15 the English sent a large force from Canada for its capture. They attacked it on a Sunday morning in September, 1814, Sir George Prevost commanding the land forces and Commodore Downie a fleet of sixteen vessels. General Macomb had a small American detachment entrenched on the southern bank of the Saranac in hastily constructed earthworks, some remains being yet visible. The naval contest, however, decided the day, the superior British fleet being overcome by the better American tactics. McDonough had but fourteen vessels, anchored in a double line across the mouth of Cumberland Bay. As the British fleet rounded Cumberland Head to make the attack, a cock that was aboard McDonough's flag-ship, the "Saratoga," suddenly flew upon a gun and crowed lustily. This was esteemed a good omen, and giving three cheers, the Americans went to work with a will. After two hours' conflict the British fleet was defeated and captured. Downie was killed early in the action, and with fifteen other officers sleeps in Plattsburg Cemetery. McDonough was crushed by a falling boom, and afterwards was stunned by being struck with the flying head of one of his officers, knocked off by a cannon-shot, but he was undaunted to the end. Honors were heaped upon him, Congress giving him a gold medal, and he was also presented with an estate upon Cumberland Head overlooking the scene of his victory.
Plattsburg has the chief United States military post on the Canadian border, there being usually a large force stationed at the extensive barracks. It is also the terminus of railways coming from the Adirondacks, originally built to fetch out the iron-ores, of which it is an active market. One of these railways comes from Ausable Forks. Another is the Chateaugay Railroad, which has a circuitous route around the northern and eastern verges of the wilderness, from the Chateaugay and Chazy Lakes, where are the ore beds in a dismal region. Lyon Mountain, one of the chief ore producers, has its mines at two thousand feet elevation above the lake. Stretching far away to the northward is the immense Chateaugay forest and wilderness, extending into Canada. This railroad passes Dannemora, where is located the Clinton Prison, a New York State institution, at which it is said "they always have a number of people of leisure, who pass their time in meditation, making nails, cracking ore, and in other congenial pursuits." The railroad route cuts into the red sandstone gorge of the Saranac, and follows its valley out to Plattsburg. Some distance north of Plattsburg, and at the Canadian boundary, is Rouse's Point, a border customs station. This is the northern end of Lake Champlain, which discharges through the Richelieu or Sorel River into the St. Lawrence, the waters descending about one hundred feet, and mostly by the Chambly Rapids. The Chambly Canal, which locks down this descent, provides navigation facilities from Champlain to the St. Lawrence waters.
ENTERING THE ADIRONDACKS.
From Westport on Lake Champlain is one of the favorite routes into the Adirondacks. The name of this dark region originally came from the Mohawks, who applied it in derision to the less fortunate savages that inhabited the forbidding forests. The luxurious Mohawk, living in fertile valleys growing plenty of corn, could see nothing for his dusky enemy in this dismal wilderness to eat, excepting the dark trees growing on its mountain sides, and therefore the Mohawk called these people the Adirondacks, or "the bark and wood eaters." The actual derivation of the word is thought to come from the Iroquois root "atiron," meaning "to stretch along," referring to the mountain chains. Starting from Westport, we penetrate the region by a steep road into the Raven Pass, known as the "Gate of the Adirondacks," going through one of the ridges, among juniper bushes and aspen poplars, and thus get to the pleasant valley beyond, where flows the lovely Bouquet River. Here are a bunch of red-roofed cottages surrounded by elms contrasting prettily with the green fields, with boarding-houses and hotels interspersed, making up the village of Elizabethtown, the county-seat of Essex, which is hereabout called E-Town, for short. It spreads over the flat bottom of a fertile valley, encompassed around by high mountains. Circling all over the valley and yet concealed in deep gorges is the Bouquet River, which flows out to Lake Champlain, near the Split Rock. To the westward rises the sharp bare granite top of Mount Hurricane, nearly thirty-eight hundred feet, and to the southwest the towering Giant of the Valley, over forty-five hundred feet. Cobble Hill, rising two thousand feet, closes up the western end of the main village street, its ball-like top being a complete reproduction of a huge cobble-stone. Out to the northward goes a wild mountain road, through the Poke o' Moonshine Pass, leading to Ausable Chasm, twenty-three miles away.
Travelling westward from E-Town, we mount the enclosing slope of the Pleasant Valley, and through the gorge alongside Mount Hurricane, up the canyon of the western branch of Bouquet River. Crossing the summit among the granite rocks and forests, we then descend into another long, trough-like valley, stretching as a broad intervale far away both north and south, through which flows Ausable River. This intervale includes the charming "Flats of Keene," the sparkling Ausable waters meandering quietly over them beneath overhanging maples and alders, quivering aspens and gracefully swaying elms, occasionally dancing among the stones and shingle in some gentle rapid. Here are farmhouses, with many villas, the great mountain ridges protecting the valley from the wintry blasts. This intervale has in the eastern ridge the Giant of the Valley, with Mount Dix alongside, rising nearly five thousand feet, and to the southward, reared thirty-five hundred feet, exactly at the meridian, is the graceful Noon Mark Mountain, which casts the sun's noon shadow northward over the centre of the "Flats of Keene." The river, coming from the south, flows out of the lower Ausable Lake or the Long Pond, and dashes swiftly down its boulder-covered bed. Its waters are gathered largely from the eastern flanks of Mount Tahawus, and also from the galaxy of attendant peaks—Dix, Noon Mark, Colvin, Boreas, the Gothics, and others—grandly encircling the southern head of the attractive Keene Valley. The Ausable River rises under the brow of Tahawus, and flowing through the two long and narrow Ausable Lakes at two thousand feet elevation, traverses the whole length of the Keene Valley northward, to unite with its western branch at Ausable Forks, and thence goes through the great chasm to Lake Champlain. The head of the Keene Valley with the adjacent mountain slopes, extending through parts of three counties and covering a tract of forty square miles, is the "Adirondack Mountain Reserve." This reservation gives complete protection to the fish and game, and also preserves the forests and sources of the water supply. The Lower Ausable Lake is about two miles long and the Upper Ausable Lake nearly the same length, there being over a mile's distance between them. Some of the highest and most romantic of the Adirondack peaks environ these lakes. The sharply-cut summit of Mount Colvin rises forty-one hundred and fifty feet alongside them. The Ausable Lakes are in the bottom of a deep cleft between these great mountains, their sides rising almost sheer, two thousand feet and more above them. The lake shores are steep and rocky walls, reared apparently to the sky, the deep and contracted cleft making the lakes look more like rivers, surmounted high up the rocks by overhanging foliage, the trees diminutive in the distance. Of the Upper Ausable Lake, Warner writes that "In the sweep of its wooded shores, and the lovely contour of the lofty mountains that guard it, this lake is probably the most charming in America."
ADIRONDACK ATTRACTIONS.
The western guardian peaks of the Keene Valley are the main range of the Adirondacks, including Mount Marcy or Tahawus. Mount Colvin, alongside the Ausable Lakes, was named in honor of Verplanck Colvin, the New York surveyor and geologist, who devoted years of energy to the survey of this wilderness, and perhaps knew it better than anyone else. He was always in love with it, and thought that few really understood it. He described it as "a peculiar region, for though the geographical centre of the wilderness may be readily reached, in the light canoe-like boats of the guides, by lakes and rivers which form a labyrinth of passages for boats, the core, or rather cores, of this wilderness extend on either hand from these broad avenues of water, and in their interior spots remain to-day as untrodden by men and as unknown and wild as when the Indian paddled his birchen boat upon those streams and lakes. Amid these mountain solitudes are places where, in all probability, the foot of man never trod; and here the panther has his den among the rocks, and rears his savage kittens undisturbed, save by the growl of bear and screech of lynx, or the hoarse croak of the raven taking its share of the carcass of slain deer." The tangled Adirondack forest may to some seem monotonous and even dreary, but Mr. Street, the poet-writer of the region, thus enthusiastically refers to it: "Select a spot; let the eye become a little accustomed to the scene, and how the picturesque beauties, the delicate minute charms, the small overlooked things, steal out like lurking tints in an old picture. See that wreath of fern, graceful as the garland of a Greek victor at the games; how it hides the dark, crooked root, writhing snake-like from yon beech! Look at the beech's instep steeped in moss, green as emerald, with other moss twining round the silver-spotted trunk in garlands or in broad, thick, velvety spots! Behold yonder stump, charred with the hunter's camp-fire, and glistening black and satin-like in its cracked ebony! Mark yon mass of creeping pine, mantling the black mould with furzy softness! View those polished cohosh-berries, white as drops of pearl! See the purple barberries and crimson clusters of the hopple, contrasting their vivid hues!—and the massive logs peeled by decay—what gray, downy smoothness! and the grasses in which they are weltering—how full of beautiful motions and outlines!"
From the Keene Valley we climb up the gorge of a brisk little brook to the westward, and passing through the notch between Long Pond Mountain and the precipitous sides of the well-named Pitch-Off Mountain, come to the pair of elongated deep and narrow ponds between them,—the Cascade Lakes,—stretching nearly two miles. Huge boulders line their banks with a wall of rough and ponderous masonry, entwined with the roots of trees, and like the Ausable Lakes, they are another Alpine formation, their surfaces being at twenty-one hundred feet elevation, yet resting in the bottom of a tremendous chasm. An unique cascade, falling in successive leaps for seven hundred and fifty feet down the southern enclosing mountain wall, has given them the name—a delicate white lace ribbon of foaming water, finally passing into the lower lake. The grand dome of Mount McIntyre, in the main Adirondack range, rises in majesty to an elevation of fifty-two hundred feet, a sentinel beyond the western entrance to this remarkable pass. Formerly iron-ores were found here, but iron-making has been abandoned for the more profitable occupation of caring for the summer tourist. Beyond these lakes the summit of the pass is crossed, and there is a farm or two upon a broad plateau, at twenty-five hundred feet elevation, the highest cultivated land in New York State. Comparatively little but hay, however, can be raised, the seasons are so short and fickle. Deer haunt this remote region, and their runways can be seen. Emerging from the pass, with the little streams all running westward to the Ausable's western branch, there is got a fine view of the main Adirondack range, with the massive Mount McIntyre and the almost perpendicular side of Wallface rising beyond, the deep notch of the famous Indian Pass, cut down between them, showing plainly. Both peaks tower grandly above a surrounding galaxy of bleak, dark mountains.
OLD JOHN BROWN OF OSAWATOMIE.