There are in Elizabethtown two inns,[3] one down by the stream, a branch of the Boquet, and the other up on the 'Plain,' near the court house. The latter has decidedly the advantage in situation. Both are owned by the same landlord, and are well kept. We arrived in the midst of court week, and found every place filled with lawyers, clients, witnesses, and even, behind the bars of the brick jail, we could see the prisoners, more fortunate than their city compeers, in that they breathed pure air, and could look out upon the everlasting hills, solemn preachers of the might and the rights, as well as the mercy of their Creator.
From two to three miles from the Valley House is the top of Raven Hill, seemingly a watchtower on the outskirts of the citadel of the Adirondacs. The ascent is easy, and the view panoramic, embracing Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains, Burlington and Westport, the bare, craggy hills to the north, the higher ranges to the west, with the abrupt precipices of the 'Keene Pass' and the lofty 'Dome' and 'Bald Mountain,' Dix's Peak to the south, a clear lake known as 'Black Pond' among the hills toward Moriah, and at the base the Pleasant Valley with the winding Boquet River.
Near the lower hotel is Wood Mountain, about half as high as Raven Hill, and offering a view somewhat similar, although of course not so extended. The distance to the top is but little over a mile, and the pathway, although somewhat steep, is very good.
A visit to the iron mines and works at Moriah can readily be made from Elizabethtown. The distance is from twelve to fourteen miles. One of the mines is quite picturesque, being cut into the solid rock, under a roof supported by great columns of the valuable ore. The workmen, with their picks and barrows, passing to and fro, as seen from the top of the excavation, look like German pictures of tiny gnomes and elves delving for precious minerals. The yield from the ore is about eighty per cent., and of very superior quality. The return road passes down the hill, whence is the splendid view of the 'Valley' before mentioned.
A delightful excursion can also be made to 'Split Rock,' about nine miles up the valley of the Boquet. The little river there, in two separate falls, makes its way through a rocky cleft. The basins of the upper, and the singularly winding chasm of the lower fall, are especially worthy of observation. At Split Rock we first made any extensive acquaintance with a costume which threatens to be immensely popular among the Adirondacs, namely, the Bloomer, and in the agility displayed by some of its fair wearers we beheld the results likely to spring from its adoption as a mountain walking dress. Our private observation was, that moderately full, short skirts, without hoop of course, terminating a little distance above the ankle, and worn with clocked or striped woollen stockings, were more graceful than a somewhat shorter and scantier skirt, with the pantalette extending down to the foot. The former seems really à la paysanne, while the latter, in addition to some want of grace, suggests Bloomer, and the many absurdities which have been connected with that name. It is a great pity that a sensible and healthful change in walking attire should have been caricatured by its own advocates, and thus rendered too conspicuous to be agreeable to many who would otherwise have adopted it in some modified and reasonable form.
Near New Russia, about five miles from Elizabethtown, is a brook flowing among moss-covered stones and rocks, overhung by giant trees of the original forest; and just out of Elizabethtown is a glen, through which pours a pretty stream, making pleasant little cascades under the shadow of a less aged wood, and within a bordering of beautiful ferns, running pines, and bright forest blossoms. We should also not neglect to mention Cobble Hill, a bold pile of rocks, rising directly out of the plain on which a portion of the town is situated.
But we had heard of the 'Walled Rocks of the Au Sable,' and Elsie and I could not rest until our own eyes had witnessed that they were worthy of their reputation. We left Elizabethtown at half past six in the morning, our team a fast pair of ponies, belonging to our landlord. The previous days had been warm and obstinately hazy, but for that especial occasion the atmosphere cooled and cleared, and lent us some fine views back toward the Giant of the Valley and the Keene Pass. The first ten miles of road were excellent. We then crossed a little stream known as Trout Brook, a tributary of the Boquet, and, by a somewhat rough and stony way, began to ascend the high land separating the Boquet from the Au Sable. This ridge includes the 'Poke a Moonshine' Mountain, a rude pile of rocks, burnt over, and with perpendicular precipices of some three or four hundred feet, facing the road which winds along the bottom of the declivity. This cleft thus becomes another 'Pass,' and, with the huge rocks fallen at its base, offers a wild and rather dreary scene. To the north, near the foot of the mountain, are two ponds, Butternut and Auger, which wind fantastically in and out among the hills. As we descended the ridge, we looked toward Canada, far away over rolling plains and hillocks, and soon after reached the sandy stretch of the basin of the Au Sable, in the midst of which is Keeneville, twenty-two miles from Elizabethtown.
By the wayside we passed a solitary grave, the mound and headstone in a patch of corn and potatoes. Was the unknown occupant some dear one whom the dwellers in the humble cabin near by were unwilling to send far away from daily remembrance, or were they too poor to seek the shelter of the common graveyard, or, again, had the buriers of that dead one followed to the 'land of promise,' or departed to some other far country, leaving this grave to the care or rather carelessness of stranger hands, and did the snowy headstone recall no memory of past love to the laborer who ploughed his furrow near that mound, or to the children who played around it?
Ah! thus, not only in the mystical caverns of beauty, poetry, and romance are hidden the graves of buried hopes, but even amid the corn and potatoes of daily life rise the ghostly head and foot stones of aspirations dead and put away out of sight, dead in the body, in daily act, but living yet in spirit, and influencing the commonplace facts to which they have yielded the field, permeating the everyday routine with the ennobling power of lofty desires, and keeping the wayworn traveller from sinking into the slough of materialism or the quicksands of utter weariness. The man who in his youth dreamed of elevating his kind by a noble employment of the gifts of genius, may find that genius apparently useless, a hindrance even to prosperity, but he can nevertheless sow along his way seeds of beauty not lost upon the thinking beings about him, and bearing fruit perhaps in some future generation. The woman whose reveries have pictured her a Joan of Arc, leading her country's armies to victory, and finally yielding her life in the good cause, may sew for sanitary commissions, and, nursing in some hospital, dropping medicines, making soups and teas, die of some deadly fever, a willing sacrifice to her country.
Later in the day we saw the corn and potatoes growing up to the very verge of an exquisite waterfall, reckless strength and glorious poetry side by side with patient utility and humble prose. This union seemed not strange and unnatural, as did that of the solitary grave with the active labor of supplying the living with daily food, the grave the more lonely that the living with their material wants encircled it so closely.