[page 200]
"From the station where the coaches of the hotel await expected guests, a winding pike, the very perfection of a road, leads up the hill. From the carriage, as it rises to the crest, a wondrous outlook to the westward is opened to view. Nearly a thousand square miles of valley, lake and mountain are within range of the eye or included in the area encircled by visible peaks. As the porch of the hotel is reached, the view, enhanced by the fine foreground, is indeed beautiful, but still finer is the grandeur of the scene from the arches of the tall central dome of the house.
"To the southward we see Whiteface, showing, late in spring and early in autumn, its coronet of almost perpetual snow; and in a grand circle still more southward we see in succession McIntyre, Marcy (both over 5,000 feet high), Haystack, Dix, the Gothic peaks, Hurricane and the Giant. This noble sisterhood of mountains rises from the very heart of the wilderness, and yet the guests at the Hotel Champlain may reach any portion of their environment within a few hours."
The fine equipment and frequent train service of the Delaware &Hudson between New York and Bluff Point without change, by daylight or at night, and the direct connection of the same line with the Hudson River steamboats, places this resort high upon the list of available summering points in the dry and healthful north for families from the metropolis. Travel from the west, coming down the St. Lawrence River, or through Canada via Montreal, will find Bluff Point easy to reach; while from the White Mountains and New England seashore resorts it is accessible by through trains via St. Albans or Burlington.
The western shore of Lake Champlain forms the margin of the most varied and altogether delightful wilderness to be found anywhere upon this continent east of the Rocky Mountains. The serried peaks to the westward are in plain view from its shores, their foot-hills ending [page 201] in lofty and often abrupt ridges where they meet the lake. Three impetuous rivers, the Saranac, the Salmon and the Ausable, flow down from the cool, clear lakes, hidden away in the wildwood, and, breaking through this barrier at and in the vicinity of Plattsburgh, contribute not only to the lucid waters of Lake Champlain but greatly to the picturesque variety of the region.
There lie broad acres laced with rills
And gemmed with lake and pond
Behind a wave of wooded hills
And mountain peaks beyond.