In our journey from Albany to Plattsburgh, we have indicated various
routes to the Adirondacks: By way of Saratoga and North Creek to Blue
Mountain Lake following the course of the Hudson which might therefor
be called "The Hudson Gateway;" _via_ Lake George, Westport, and
Elizabethtown, suited for carriage and pedestrian trips, and _via_
Plattsburgh, which might be termed "The Northern Portal." In addition
to these it has been my lot to make several trips up the valley of the
Sacandaga to Lake Pleasant and Indian Lake, and _via_ Schroon Lake
to Sanford and Lake Henderson--and four times to ascend the mountain
trail of Tahawas to the tiny rills and fountains of the Hudson, but
one trip abides in memory distinct and unrivalled, which may be of
service to those who wish to visit in fact or fancy the head waters of
the Hudson.
=The Tahawas Club.=--We took the cars one bright August morning from
Plattsburgh to Ausable Forks, a distance of twenty miles, hired a team
to Beede's, some thirty miles distant from the "Forks;" took dinner at
Keene, and pursued our route up the beautiful valley of the Ausable.
From this point we visited Roaring-Brook Falls, some four hundred feet
high, a very beautiful waterfall in the evening twilight. The next
morning we started, bright and early, for the Ausable Ponds. Four
miles brought us to the Lower Ausable. The historic guide, "old
Phelps," rowed us across the lower lake, pointing out, from our slowly
moving and heavily laden scow, "Indian Head" on the left, and the
"Devil's Pulpit" on the right, lifted about eight hundred feet above
the level of the lake. "Phelps" remarked with quaint humor, that
he was frequently likened to his Satanic Majesty, as he often took
clergymen "up thar." The rocky walls of this lake rise from one
thousand to fifteen hundred feet high, in many places almost
perpendicular. A large eagle soared above the cliffs, and circled in
the air above us, which we took as a good omen of our journey.
* * *
The rills
That feed thee rise among the storied rocks
Where Freedom built her battle-tower.
_William Wallace._
* * *
After reaching the southern portion of the lake, a trail of a mile and
a quarter leads to the Upper Ausable--the gem of the Adirondacks. This
lake, over two thousand feet above the tide, is surrounded on all
sides by lofty mountains. Our camp was on the eastern shore, and I can
never forget the sunset view, as rosy tints lit up old Skylight, the
Haystack and the Gothics; nor can I ever forget the evening songs from
a camp-fire across the lake, or the "bear story" told by Phelps, a
tale never really finished, but made classic and immortal by Stoddard,
in his spicy and reliable handbook to the North Woods.
The next morning we rowed across the lake and took the Bartlett trail,
ascending Haystack, some five thousand feet high, just to get an
appetite for dinner; our guide encouraging us on the way by saying
that there never had been more than twenty people before "on that air
peak." In fact, there was no trail, and in some places it was so steep
that we were compelled to go up on all fours; or as Scott puts it more
elegantly in the "Lady of the Lake":
"The foot was fain
Assistance from the hand to gain."
The view from the summit well repaid the toil. We saw Slide Mountain,
near by to the north, and Whiteface far beyond, perhaps twenty-five
miles distant; northeast, the Gothics; east, Saw-teeth, Mt. Colvin,
Mt. Dix, and the lakes of the Ausable. To the southeast, Skylight;
northwest, Tahawas, still foolishly styled on some of our maps,
Mt. Marcy. The descent of Haystack was as easy as Virgil's famous
"Descensus Averni." We went down in just twenty minutes. The one
that reached the bottom first simply possessed better adaptation for
rolling.
* * *
Eagles still claim the loftiest heights: from there
They scan with solemn eyes the scenes below--
The river and the hills which shall endure
While man's frail generations come and go.
_E. A. Lente._
* * *
One mile from the foot of Haystack brought us to Panther Gorge Camp,
appropriately named, one of the wildest spots in the Adirondacks. We
remained there that night and slept soundly, although a dozen of us
were packed so closely in one small camp that no individual could turn
over without disarranging the whole mass. Caliban and Trinculo were
not more neighborly, and Sebastian, even sober, would have been fully
justified in taking us for "a rare monster" with twenty legs.
The next morning we ascended Tahawas, but saw nothing save whirling
clouds on its summit. Twice since then we have had better fortune, and
looked down from this mountain peak, five thousand three hundred and
forty-four feet above the sea, upon the loveliest mountain landscape
that the sun ever shone upon. We went down the western slope of
Tahawas, through a driving rain, to Camp Colden, where, with clothes
hung up to dry, we looked like a party of New Zealanders preparing
dinner, hungry enough, too, to make an orthodox meal of each other.
The next day the weather cleared up, and we made a trip of two miles
over a rough mountain trail to Lake Avalanche, whose rocky and
precipitous walls form a fit christening bowl, or baptistery-font for
the infant Hudson.
Returning to Camp Colden and resuming our western march, two miles
brought us to Calamity Pond, where a lone monument marks the spot of
David Henderson's death, by the accidental discharge of a pistol. Five
miles from this point brought us to the "Deserted Village," or the
Upper Adirondack Iron Works, with houses and furnaces abandoned,
and rapidly falling into decay. Here we found a cheery fireside and
cordial welcome.
* * *
All the sad story of forest and flower,
All the red glory of sunsetting hour,
Comes till I seem to lie lapped in bright dreams
Lulled by the lullaby murmur of streams.
_James Kennedy._
* * *
Had I time to picture this level, grass-grown street, with ten or
fifteen square box-looking houses, windowless, empty and desolate; a
school-house with its long vacation of twenty-three years; a bank with
heavy shutters and ponderous locks, whose floor, Time, the universal
burglar, had undermined; two large furnaces with great rusty wheels,
whose occupation was gone forever; a thousand tons of charcoal,
untouched for a quarter of a century; thousands of bricks waiting for a
builder; a real haunted house, whose flapping clap-boards contain
more spirits than the Black Forests of Germany--a village so utterly
desolate, that it has not even the vestige of a graveyard--if I could
picture to you this village, as it appeared to me that weird midnight,
lying so quiet,
"under the light of the solemn moon,"
you would realize as I did then, that truth is indeed stranger than
fiction, and that Goldsmith in _his_ "Deserted Village" had not
overdrawn the description of desolate Auburn.
By special request, we were permitted to sleep that night in the
Haunted House and no doubt listened to the first crackling that the
old fire-place had known for years. Many bedsteads in the old building
were still standing, so we only needed bedding from the hotel to
make us comfortable. As we went to sleep we expressed a wish to be
interviewed in the still hours of the night by any ghosts or spirits
who might happen to like our company; but the spirits must have been
absent on a visit that evening, for we slept undisturbed until the old
bell, suspended in a tree, rang out the cheery notes of "trout and
pickerel." We understand that the Haunted House from that night
lost its old-time reputation, and is now frequently brought into
requisition as an "Annex," whenever the hotel or "Club House," as it
is now called, happens to be full. The "Deserted Village" is rich in
natural beauty. Lakes Henderson and Sanford are near at hand, and the
lovely Preston Ponds are only five miles distant.
* * *
Stately and awful was the form of Tahawas, the old
scarred warrior king of the mountains, and yet it owns
pines that sing like the sea, brooks that warble like the
robin, and flowers that scent the air like the orange-blossoms
of Italy.
_Alfred B. Street._
* * *
Resuming our march through Indian Pass, under old Wall-Face Mountain,
we reached a comfortable farmhouse at sunset, near North Elba, known
by the name of Scott's. The next morning we visited John Brown's house
and grave by the old rock, and read the beautiful inscription, "Bury
me by the Old Rock, where I used to sit and read the word of God."
From this point we went to Lake Placid, engaged a lad to row us across
the lake--some of our party had gone on before--and strapped our
knapsacks for another mountain climb. We were fortunate in having a
lovely day, and from its sparkling glacier-worn summit we could look
back on all the mountains of our pleasant journey, and far away across
Lake Champlain to Mount Mansfield and Camel's Hump of the Green
Mountains, and farther still to the faint outlines of Mount
Washington. We reached Wilmington that night, drove the next morning
to Ausable Forks, and took the cars for Plattsburgh. The ten days'
trip was finished, and at this late hour I heartily thank the Tahawas
Club of Plattsburgh for taking me under their generous care and
guidance. We took Phelps, our guide, back with us to Plattsburgh. When
he reached the "Forks," and saw the cars for the first time in his
life, he stooped down and, examining the track, said, "What tarnal
little wheels." I suppose he concluded that if the ordinary cart had
two large wheels, that real car wheels would resemble the Rings of
Saturn. He saw much to amuse and interest him during his short stay
in Plattsburgh, but after all he thought it was rather lonesome, and
gladly returned to his lakes and mountains, where he slept in peace,
with the occasional intrusion of a "Bar" or a "Painter." He knew the
region about Tahawas as an engineer knows his engine, or as a Greek
professor knows the pages of his lexicon. He had lived so closely with
nature that he seemed to understand her gentlest whispers, and he had
more genuine poetry in his soul than many a man who chains weak ideas
in tangled metre.
* * *
Lake Avalanche with rocky wall
And Henderson's dark-wooded shore,
Your echoes linger still and call
Unto my soul forevermore.
_Wallace Bruce_.
* * *
[Illustration: INDIAN HEAD.]
Since that first delightful trip I have visited the Adirondacks many
times, and I hope this summer to repeat the excursion. To me Tahawas
is the grand centre. It remains unchanged. In fact, the route I have
here traced is the same to-day as then. Even the rude camps are
located in the same places, with the exception that the trail has been
shortened over Tahawas, and a camp established on Skylight. With good
guides the route is not difficult for ladies in good health,--say
sufficient health to endure half a day's shopping. Persons
contemplating the mountain trip need blankets, a knapsack, and a
rubber cloth or overcoat; food can be procured at the hotels or farm
houses.
* * *
The old English ballads have all the sparkle, the
energy and the rhythm of our mountain streams, but
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Bunyan are the
crystal lakes from which flow the river, ay, the Hudson
of our language.
_Wallace Bruce_.
* * *
In this hasty sketch I have had little space to indulge in
picture-painting. I passed Bridal-Veil Fall without a reference. I
was tempted to loiter on the banks of the Feld-spar and the bright
Opalescent, but I passed by without even picking a pebble from the
clear basins of its sparkling cascades. I passed the "tear of the
clouds," four thousand feet above the tide--that fountain of the
Hudson nearest to the sky, without being beguiled into poetry. I have
not ventured upon a description of a sunrise view from the summit of
Tahawas, of the magic effect of light above clouds that clothe the
surrounding peaks in garments wrought, it seems, of softest wool,
until mist and vapor dissolve in roseate colors, and the landscape
lies before us like an open book, which many glad eyes have looked
upon again and again. I have left it for your guides to tell you, by
roaring camp-fires, long stories of adventure in trapping and hunting,
of wondrous fishes that grow longer and heavier every season, although
captured and broiled many and many a year ago--trout and pickerel
literally pickled in fiction, served and re-served in the piquant
sauce of mountain vocabulary. In brief, I have kept my imagination and
enthusiasm under strict control. But, after all, the Adirondacks are
a wonderland, and we, who dwell in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, are
happy in having this great park of Nature's making at our very doors.
It has charms alike for the hunter, the angler, the artist, the
writer, and the scientist. Let us rejoice, therefore, that the State
of New York is waking at last to the fact, that these northern
mountains were intended by nature to be something more than lumber
ranches, to be despoiled by the axe, and finally revert to the State
for "taxes" in the shape of bare and desolate wastes. Nor can the most
practical legislator charge those, who wish to preserve the Adirondack
woods, with idle sentiment; as it is now an established scientific
fact that the rainfall of a country is largely dependent upon its
forest land. If the water supply of the north were cut off, to any
perceptible degree, the Hudson, during the months of July and August,
would be a mere sluice of salt water from New York to Albany; and the
northern canals, dependent on this supply, would become empty and
useless ditches. Our age is intensely practical, but we are fortunate
in this, that so far as the preservation of the Adirondacks is
concerned, utility, common sense, and the appreciation of the
beautiful are inseparably blended.
* * *
Wild umbrage far around me clings
To breezy knoll and hushed ravine,
And o'er each rocky headland flings
Its mantle of refreshing green.
_Henry T. Tuckerman_.
* * *
To those persons who do not desire long mountain jaunts, who simply
need some quiet place for rest and recuperation, I would suggest this:
Select some place near the base of these clustered mountains, like the
tasty Adirondack Lodge at Clear Pond, only seven miles from the summit
of Tahawas, or Beede's pleasant hotel, high and dry above Keene Flats,
near to the Ausable Ponds, or some pleasant hotel or quiet farm-house
in the more open country near Lake Placid and the Saranacs. But
I prophesy that the spirit of adventure will come with increased
strength, and men and women alike will be found wandering off on
long excursions, sitting about great camp-fires, ay, listening like
children to tales which have not gathered truth with age. If you have
control of your time you will find no pleasanter months than July,
August and September, and when you return to your firesides with
new vigor to fight the battle of life, you will feel, I think, like
thanking the writer for having advised you to go thither.
* * *
To shut up a glen or a waterfall for one man's exclusive
enjoying; to fence out a genial eye from any
corner of the earth which nature has lovingly touched;
to lock up trees and glades shady paths and haunts
along rivulets, would be an embezzlement by one man
of God's gifts to all.
_N. P. Willis._
* * *
I have written in this article the Indian name, Tahawas, in the place
of Mt. Marcy, and for this reason: There is no justice in robbing the
Indian of his keen, poetic appreciation, by changing a name, which
has in itself a definite meaning, for one that means nothing in its
association with this mountain. We have stolen enough from this
unfortunate race, to leave, at least, those names in our woodland
vocabulary that chance to have a musical sound to our imported Saxon
ears. The name Tahawas is not only beautiful in itself, but also
poetic in its interpretation--signifying "I cleave the clouds."
Coleridge, in his glorious hymn, "Before sunrise in the vale of
Chamouni," addresses Mount Blanc:
"Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black--
An ebon mass. Methinks thou piercest it.
_As with a wedge!_"
The name or meaning of Tahawas was never made known to the great
English poet, who died sixty years ago. Is it not remarkable that
the untutored Indian, and the keenist poetic mind which England has
produced for a century, should have the same idea in the uplifted
mountains? There is also another reason why we, as a State, should
cherish the name Tahawas. While the Sierra Nevadas and the Alps
slumbered beneath the waves of the ocean, before the Himalayas or the
Andes had asserted their supremacy, scientists say, that the high
peaks of the Adirondacks stood alone above the waves, "the cradle of
the world's life;" and, as the clouds then encircled the vast waste
of water, Tahawas then rose--"Cleaver" alike of the waters and the
clouds.
* * *
Tahawas, rising stern and grand,
"Cloud-sunderer" lift thy forehead high,
Guard well thy sun-kissed mountain land
Whose lakes seem borrowed from the sky.
_Wallace Bruce_.
* * *