Ampersand waited immovable while I passed many days in such innocent and healthful pleasures as these, until the right day came for the ascent.  Cool, clean, and bright, the crystal morning promised a glorious noon, and the mountain almost seemed to beckon us to come up higher.  The photographic camera and a trustworthy lunch were stowed away in the pack-basket.  The backboard was adjusted at a comfortable angle in the stern seat of our little boat.  The guide held the little craft steady while I stepped into my place; then he pushed out into the stream, and we went swiftly down toward Round Lake.

A Saranac boat is one of the finest things that the skill of man has ever produced under the inspiration of the wilderness.  It is a frail shell, so light that a guide can carry it on his shoulders with ease, but so dexterously fashioned that it rides the heaviest waves like a duck, and slips through the water as if by magic.  You can travel in it along the shallowest rivers and across the broadest lakes, and make forty or fifty miles a day, if you have a good guide.

Everything depends, in the Adirondacks, as in so many other regions of life, upon your guide.  If he is selfish, or surly, or stupid, you will have a bad time.  But if he is an Adirondacker of the best old-fashioned type,—­now unhappily growing more rare from year to year,—­you will find him an inimitable companion, honest, faithful, skilful and cheerful.  He is as independent as a prince, and the gilded youths and finicking fine ladies who attempt to patronise him are apt to make but a sorry show before his solid and undisguised contempt.  But deal with him man to man, and he will give you a friendly, loyal service which money cannot buy, and teach you secrets of woodcraft and lessons in plain, self-reliant manhood more valuable than all the learning of the schools.  Such a guide was mine, rejoicing in the Scriptural name of Hosea, but commonly called, in brevity and friendliness, “Hose.”

As we entered Round Lake on this fair morning, its surface was as smooth and shining as a mirror.  It was too early yet for the tide of travel which sends a score of boats up and down this thoroughfare every day; and from shore to shore the water was unruffled, except by a flock of sheldrakes which had been feeding near Plymouth Rock, and now went skittering off into Weller Bay with a motion between flying and swimming, leaving a long wake of foam behind them.

At such a time as this you can see the real colour of these Adirondack lakes.  It is not blue, as romantic writers so often describe it, nor green, like some of those wonderful Swiss lakes; although of course it reflects the colour of the trees along the shore; and when the wind stirs it, it gives back the hue of the sky, blue when it is clear, gray when the clouds are gathering, and sometimes as black as ink under the shadow of storm.  But when it is still, the water itself is like that river which one of the poets has described as