The night boat for Albany, June 27th, 1864, was crowded with passengers fleeing from pavements, summer heats, and stifling city air, to green fields, cool shadows of wooded glens, or life-giving breezes from mountain heights. True, there were some who, like Aunt Sarah Grundy, bitterly lamented the ample rooms and choice fare of their own establishments, and whose idea of a 'summer in the country' was limited to a couple of months at Saratoga or Newport, with a fresh toilette for each succeeding day; but even these knew that there were at both places green trees, limpid waters, whether of lake or ocean, and a wide horizon wherein to see sunsets, moonrises, and starlight. Aunt Sarah went to Newport; she found there fewer of such persons as she was pleased to designate as 'rabble,' and the soft, warm fogs were exactly the summer atmosphere for a complexion too delicate to be exposed to the fervent blaze of a July sun.
But the majority were not of Aunt Sarah's stamp. They were men, wearied with nine months' steady work, eager for country sports, for the freedom of God's own workhouse, where labor and bad air and cramped positions need not be synonymous; or women, glad to escape the routine of housekeeping, the daily contest with Bridget or Katrine, with Jean, Williams, or Priscilla. There were young girls, with round hats and thick boots, anxious to substitute grassy lanes or rocky hillsides for the flagstones of avenues; lads, to whom climbing of fruit trees and rowing boats were pleasant reminiscences of some foregone year; and finally, children, who longed for change, and whose little frames needed all the oxygen and exercise their anxious parents could procure for them.
Such, doubtless, was a large portion of the precious freight of our 'floating palace,' whose magnificence proved to us rather of the Dead-Sea-apple sort, as we had arrived upon the scene of action too late to procure comfortable quarters for the night, and, in addition, soon after daybreak found ourselves aground within sight of Albany, and with no prospect of release until after the departure of the train for Whitehall. At a few moments past seven, we heard the final whistle, and knew that our journey's end was now postponed some four and twenty hours. We afterward learned that by taking the boat to Troy we would have run less risk of delay, as the Whitehall and Rutland train usually awaits the arrival of said boat. At nine o'clock we reached Albany, and one of our number spent a dreary day, battling with headache and the ennui of a little four year old, who could extract no amusement from the unsuggestive walls of a hotel parlor. About five in the afternoon we left for Whitehall, where we purposed passing the night. This movement did not one whit expedite the completion of our journey, but offered a change of place, and an additional hour of rest in the morning, as the lake-boat train from Whitehall was the same that left Albany shortly after seven.
We found Whitehall a homely little town, in a picturesque situation, on the side of a steep hill, past which winds the canal, and under which thundered the train that on the following morning bore us to the lake, where the pleasant steamboat 'United States' awaited her daily cargo. The upper portion of Lake Champlain is very narrow, and the channel devious; the shores are sometimes marshy, sometimes rocky, and the bordering hills have softly swelling outlines. Our day was hazy, and the Green Mountains of Vermont seemed floating in some species of celestial atmosphere suddenly descended upon that fair State. We passed the Narrows (a singular, rocky cleft, through which flows the lake), and soon after came to Ticonderoga, with its ruined fort and environing hills.
After leaving Crown Point, the lake becomes much wider, and at Port Henry spreads out into a noble expanse of water. Behind Port Henry, the Adirondac peaks already begin to form a towering background. Westport, however, has a still more beautiful situation. The lake there is very broad, the sloping shores are wooded, the highest peaks of the Green Mountains are visible to the east and northeast, and the Adirondacs rise, tier after tier, toward the west.
On the boat were wounded soldiers going to their homes. Poor fellows! They had left their ploughs and their native hills, to find wounds and fevers in Virginia. When one looked upon the tranquil lake and halo-crowned mountains, it seemed almost impossible that the passions of evil men should have power to draw even that placid region into the vortex, and hurl back its denizens scarred and scathed, to suffer amid its beauty. And yet were these men the very marrow and kernel of the landscape, the defenders of the soil, the patriots who were willing to give themselves that their country might remain one and undivided, that the 'home of the brave' might indeed be the 'land of the free.'
At Westport we left the boat, and found the stage to Elizabethtown, a buckboard, already crowded with passengers. An inn close at hand furnished us the only covered wagon we chanced to see during our ten weeks' sojourn among the Adirondacs. The drive to Elizabethtown (eight miles) was hot and dusty, for we faced the western sun, and the long summer drought was just then commencing to make itself felt. Nevertheless, there was beauty enough by the wayside to make one forget such minor physical annoyances. As the road rose over the first hills, the views back, over the lake and toward those hazy, dreamy-looking Vermont mountains, seemed a leaf from some ancient romance, wherein faultless knights errant sought peerless lady loves with golden locks flowing to their tiny feet, and the dragons were all on the outside, dwellers in dark caverns and noisome dens. In our day, I fear, we have not improved the matter, for the dark caverns seem to have passed within, and the dragons have been adopted as familiars.
By and by, on some arid spots, appeared the low, spreading juniper, which we had previously known only as the garden pet of an enthusiastic tree fancier. And thus, perhaps, the virtues which here we cultivate by unceasing care and watchfulness, will, when we are translated to some wider sphere, nearer to the Creator of all, burst upon us as simple, natural gifts to the higher and freer intelligences native to that sphere.
Raven Hill is the highest point between Westport and Elizabethtown. It is a beautifully formed conical hill, rising some twenty-one hundred feet above the sea level, and contributing the cliffs on the northern side of the 'Pass,' through which leads the road into the valley of the Boquet, that vale known formerly as the 'The Pleasant Valley,' in which was Betseytown, now dignified into Elizabethtown. Does an increase in civilization and refinement indeed destroy familiarity, render us more strange one to another, even, through much complexity, to our own selves? The southern side of the Pass is formed by the slope of the 'Green Mountain,' once so called from its beautiful verdure, now, alas! burnt over, bristling with dead trees and bare rocks, and green only by reason of weeds, brambles, and a bushy growth of saplings. The view, descending from the summit of the Pass into the Pleasant Valley, is charming. The Boquet runs through green meadows and cultivated fields, while round it rise lofty mountains—the 'Giant of the Valley' (alias 'Great Dome' or 'Bald Peak'), being especially remarkable, with its summits, green or bare, round or peaked, glittering with white scars of ancient slides. To the west lies the Keene Pass, a steep, rocky gateway to the Au Sable River and the wonders beyond. This view of the descent into the Pleasant Valley is even more striking from a road passing over the hills some five miles south of Elizabethtown. The vale is narrower, the point of view higher, and the opposite mountains nearer and more lofty. The Giant of the Valley rises directly in the west, and Dix's Peak closes the vista to the south. On a semi-hazy afternoon, with the sunlight streaming through in broad pathways of quivering glory, it would be difficult to imagine a more enchanting scene.