Keeseville is a manufacturing town, situated upon the Au Sable, which here breaks through a layer of Potsdam sandstone, and presents a series of most interesting and wonderful falls and chasms. About a mile below the village is the first fall of eighty feet. The river has here a large body of water, and falls in fan shape over a rapid descent of steps. It takes a sharp turn, so that without crossing the stream, a fine view can be obtained of the dancing, glittering sheet of foam. About half a mile below is Birmingham, another manufacturing town, which has done its best, but without entire success, to destroy the beauty of the second fall, immediately below the bridge, said bridge being erected upon natural piers at the sides and in the centre of the stream.
Here begins a chasm which continues for the distance of about a mile and a half. Wonderfully grand are these Walled Rocks of the Au Sable, through, which rushes the river, pent up between literally perpendicular walls, a hundred or more feet in height, and from eleven to sixty or eighty feet apart, generally from twelve to fourteen. The water sometimes rushes smoothly and deeply below, and sometimes falls over obstructions, roaring, and tumbling, and foaming. The turns in the river are very sudden, and there are great cracks and gullies extending from top to base, pillars of rock standing alone or leaning against their companions. Occasionally, looking down one of these clefts, one sees nothing but the rock walls with a foaming, rapid rushing below. At one of these most remarkable points, a rude stairway has been constructed, by which the traveller can descend to the bottom, and, standing by the water's edge, look up to the top of this singular chasm. The walls finally lower, and the river flows out into a broad basin, whence it ere long finds its way into Lake Champlain. The banks are wooded with pines, hemlocks, spruce, arbor vitaæ, beech, birch, and basswood, and the ground is covered with ferns, harebells, arbutus, linnæa, mitchella, blue lobelia, and other wild flowers.
There is an excellent inn, the Adirondac House, in Keeseville. Our attentive host told us of Professor Agassiz, and the fiery nature of his speculations regarding the probable history of the sandstone, whose strata, laid as at Trenton Falls, horizontally, layer above layer, add such interest and beauty to the stupendous walls, with their unseen, water-covered depths below, and their graceful wreaths of arbor vittæ nodding and swaying above.
He also told us a tale of the war of 1812, when a bridge, known as the 'High Bridge,' crossed the Au Sable at the narrowest point, some eleven feet in width. A rumor was abroad that the British were about to march up from Plattsburg; whereupon the bridge, consisting of three beams, each nine inches wide, was stripped of its planking. A gentleman had left his home in the morning, and, ignorant of the fate of the bridge, returned quite late at night. Urging his steed forward, it refused to cross the bridge, and not until after repeated castigation would it make the attempt. The crossing was safely accomplished, and the rider suspected nothing amiss until he reached home and was asked how he had come. 'By the High Bridge,' was his reply; whereupon he was informed that the planking had been torn away, and he must have crossed upon a string piece nine inches wide, hanging some hundred feet above the surface of the water. His sensations may be imagined.
A venturesome expedition had also been essayed by our host, in the shape of a voyage down the chasm in a boat. We presume he went at high water, when the rapids would be less dangerous.
Keeseville is only four miles from Port Kent, a steamboat landing on Lake Champlain nearly opposite Burlington, and the Adirondacs may then be approached in several ways. A stage runs three times per week from Keeseville through Elizabethtown and Schroon River to Schroon Lake. North Elba and Lake Placid are some thirty-six miles distant, and may be reached by a good road through the Wilmington Pass. Saranac is somewhat farther, but readily accessible. Strong wagons and good teams are everywhere to be found, and the only recommendation we here think needful to make to the traveller is to have a good umbrella, a thick shawl or overcoat, and as little other baggage as he or she can possibly manage to find sufficient. Trunks are sadly in the way, and carpet bags or valises the best forms for stowage under seats or among feet.
LOIS PEARL BERKELEY.
The fiery July noon was blazing over the unsheltered depot platform, where everybody was in the agony of trying to compress half an hour's work into the fifteen minutes' stop of the long express train. The day was so hot that even the group of idlers which usually formed the still life of the picture was out of sight on the shady side of the buildings. Hackmen bustled noisily about; baggage masters were busier and crosser than ever; there was the usual mêlée of leave-takings and greetings. With the choking dust and scalding glare of the sun, the whole scene might have been an anteroom to Tophet.
From the car window, Clement Moore, brown, hollow-cheeked, and clad in army blue, looked out with weary eyes on all the confusion. Half asleep in the parching heat, visions of cool, green forest depths, and endless ripple of leaves, of the ceaseless wash and sway of salt tides, drifted across his brain, and rapt him out of the sick, comfortless present. But they vanished like a flash with the sudden cessation of motion, and the reality of his surroundings came back with a great shock. Captain George, coming in five minutes after with a glass of iced lemonade in one hand and a half dozen letters in the other, found necessary so much of cheer and comfort as lay in—