Above, the lake gradually broadens, and at the widest part are seen,
on opposite sides, the village of Port Kent with its furnaces, and the
flourishing Vermont city of Burlington. The great Adirondack ridge of
Trembleau runs abruptly into the water as a sort of guardian to Port
Kent, and just above, Ausable River flows out through its sandy
lowlands into the lake. Vermont, which makes the entire eastern shore
of Champlain, is a region of rural pastoral joys with many herds and
marble ledges, a land of fat cattle and rich butter-firkins,
overlooked by mountains of gentle slope and softened outline.
Southward from Lake Champlain is Bennington, in a mountain-enclosed
valley, near which was fought in August, 1777, the famous battle in
which Colonel John Stark's Green Mountain boys cut off and signally
defeated Baum's detachment of Burgoyne's army. It is now a flourishing
manufacturing town. East of the head of Lake Champlain is Rutland, the
centre of the Vermont marble-quarrying industry and the site of the
great Howe Scale Works, a city of twelve thousand people.
Three-fourths of the marble produced in the United States comes from
this district of Vermont, and the Sutherland Falls Quarry at Proctor,
near Rutland, is said to be probably the largest quarry in the world.
These quarries are in the flanks of the Green Mountains which stretch
northward, making the watershed between the upper Connecticut River
and Lake Champlain. The Killington Peak, forty-two hundred and forty
feet high, is not far from Rutland.
Mansfield, the chief of the Green Mountains, is behind Burlington, and
rises forty-three hundred and sixty-four feet. Seen from across the
lake, it presents the upturned face of a recumbent giant, the southern
peak being the "Forehead," the middle one the "Nose," and the
northernmost and highest the "Chin." The latter, as seen against the
horizon, protrudes upwards in most positive fashion, rising three
hundred and forty feet higher than the "Nose," about a mile and a half
distant. This decisive-looking Chin is thus upraised about eight
hundred feet from the general contour of the mountain, while the Nose
is thrust upward four hundred and sixty feet, its nostril being seen
in an almost perpendicular wall of rock facing the north. Mansfield is
heavily timbered until near the summit, and a hotel is perched up
there at the base of the Nose, both Nose and Chin being composed of
rock ledges, which have been deeply scratched by boulders dragged over
them in the glacial period. These Green Mountains extend down from
Canada, and terminate in the Taghkanic and Hoosac ranges of Berkshire
in Massachusetts. They do not attain very high elevations, the Camel's
Hump, south of Mansfield, rising forty-one hundred and eighty-eight
feet. This was the "Leon Couchant" of the earliest French explorers,
and it bears a much better resemblance to a recumbent lion than to a
camel's back. The western slopes of these mountains are chiefly red
sandstone, while their body and eastern declivities are granite,
gneiss and similar rocks, and they are filled with valuable mineral
products, marbles, slates and iron-ores. Their slopes have fine
pastures of rich and nutritious grasses, and the green and rounded
summits present a striking contrast to the lofty, bare and often
jagged peaks of the White Mountains of New Hampshire beyond them.
There are cultivated lands on their slopes, at an elevation as high as
twenty-five hundred feet, and in and about them are the forests
producing the dear, delicious maple sugar:
"Down in the bush where the maple trees grow,
There's a soft, moist fall of the first sugar snow;
And the camp-fires gleam,
And the big kettles steam,
For the maple-sugar season has arrived, you know;
And these are the days when you'll find on tap
The sweetest of juices, which is pure maple sap."