“Sabrina fair!
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair!”
The “Flumes” are fine—too fine to be called flumes, according to the dictionary sense of the term. They are chasms of considerable depth and length. But I must hasten on, like the river by which we are loitering.
Our camp that night was on the shore of Colden Lake—quite a pretty little lake of its kind. But all lakes seemed (to me, at least) apologies for lakes after the Upper Au Sable. From our camp we could see where Lake Avalanche lay—not a mile, we were told, from Colden. The Judge and Colonel made an agreement with the guide to visit Lake Avalanche next morning early: but, when the time came, they found slumber too sweet, as I had anticipated they would. I had no hankering to accompany them, because, for one thing, they would have had to trudge through a regular swamp, the guide said—a kind of walking I particularly dislike; while, for another thing, it was easy to imagine the lake from the sloping cliffs that shut it in. These reminded
us of the Lower Au Sable, but, being bare and scarred, would have evidently a very inferior effect. So Avalanche, like “Yarrow,” went “unvisited.”
It was a matter of necessity now to push on to the Iron-Works. Our provisions had run out; so we made the seven miles that Sunday morning, and reached our destination in good time for dinner. The trail was the best we had seen yet. We passed “Calamity Pond,” so called from a Mr. Henderson, one of the owners of the Iron-Works, having shot himself there accidentally. He laid his revolver on a rock near the pond, and, on taking it up, discharged it into his side. On this rock now stands a neat monument erected by filial affection.
As we entered the deserted village still called the Iron-Works (though said works have been abandoned twenty years), a shower of rain fell—the first we had met. (Such a run of fine weather as we had been favored with is very rare in the Adirondacks.) The only occupied house belongs to a Mr. M——, who, while disclaiming to keep an inn or public-house of any kind, accommodates passing tourists, and even boarders. The table was good enough, especially after our frugal meals in the woods; but I cannot say as much for the beds in comparison with the camps. He had to put us for the night in another house belonging to him, but which had not been used, he said, this year, and looked as if it had not been used for several years. The bedsteads, too, surprised us by not breaking down in the night; and two of us had to occupy one bed. However, we contrived to sleep pretty well, and rose next morning quite ready for “Indian Pass.” Fortunately, Mrs. M——