VIII.

Lake George.

AUGUST.

N hour upon the railroad brings you from Saratoga to the Moreau Station. Here you climb a stage

coach to roll across the country to

Lake George. It is a fine strip of land

scape variously outlined, and with glimpses of beautiful distance. The driver pointed out to us the tree under which Jane McCrea was murdered by the Indians-a lovely spot, meet for so sad a tradition. Between us and the dim-rolling outline of the Green Mountains were the windings of the Hudson, which here, in its infancy, is a stream of fine promise, and rolled our fancies forward to its beauti ful banks below, its dark highlands, its glassy reaches, and the forms of friends on lawns and in gardens along its shores.

We dined at Glen's Falls, which we visited. They

are oppressed by the petty tyranny of a decayed dynasty of saw-mills, and the vexed river rages and tumbles among channelled rocks, making a fine spectacle of the Trentonian character. Then we bowled along through a brilliant afternoon toward the Lake. The road is one of the pleasantest I remember. And particularly on that day the grain-fields and the mountains were of the rarest delicacy of tone and texture. Through the trees, an hour from Glen's Falls, I saw a sheet of water, and we emerged upon a fine view of the Lake.

An azure air, of which the water seemed only a part more palpable, set in hills of graceful figure and foliage, and studded with countless isles of romantic beauty-such a picture as imagination touches upon the transparent perfection of summer noons, was my fancy of Lake George.

It was but partly true.

Caldwell is a hamlet at the southern end of the Lake. It is named from an eccentric gentleman, (illiberal obstinacy is always posthumously beatified into eccentricity) who owned the whole region, built a hotel on the wrong spot, determined that no one else should build anywhere, and ardently desired that no more people should settle in the neighborhood; and, in general, infested the southern shore with a success worthy of a mythological dragon. Instead,

therefore, of a fine hotel at the extremity of the Lake, commanding a view of its length, and situated in grounds properly picturesque, there is a house on one side of the end, looking across it to the opposite mountain, and forever teasing the traveller with wonder that it stands where it does.

The hotel is kept admirably, however, and the faults of position and size are obviated, as far as pos sible, by the courtesy and ability of the host. But the increasing throng of travel justifies the erection of an inn equal in every manner to the best. This year the little hamlet was but the "colony" of the hotel, and a mile across the Lake, on the opposite shore, was a small house for the accommodation of the public.

Lake George is a strange lull in excitement after Saratoga. Its tranquillity is like the morning after a ball. There is nothing to do but to bowl or to sit upon the piazza, or to go fishing upon the Lake. It is a good place to study fancy fishermen, who have taken their piscatory degrees in Wall and Pearlstreets. Most of the visitors are guests of a night, but there are also pleasant parties who pass weeks upon the Lake, and listen to the enthusiastic stories of Saratoga as incredulously as to Syren-songs; to whom Saratoga is a name and a vapor, incredible as the fervor of a tropical day to the Russian Empress

in her icy palace; parties of a character rare in our country, who do not utterly surrender the summer to luxurious idleness, but steal honey from the flowers as they fly.

And if, strolling upon the piazza, while the moon paves a quivering path across the water, along which throng enchanted recollections, a quiet voice asks if Como's self is more lovely, you are glad to say to one who understands it, your feelings of the difference between European and American scenery. We were watching the water from the piazza, over the low trees in the garden, when the empress said to me, "Now is it not more beautiful than Como?" It was an unfortunate question, because the Lake of Como is the most beautiful lake the traveller sees, and because the details of comparisons were instantly forced upon my mind.

Lake George is a simple mountain lake upon the verge of the wilderness. You ascend from its banks westward and plunge into a wild region. The hills that frame the water are low, and when not barefor fires frequently consume many miles of woodland on the hillsides-covered with the stiffly outlined, dark and cold foliage of evergreens. Among these are no signs of life. You might well fancy the populace of the primeval forest yet holding those retreats. You might still dream in the twilight that it