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.

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  Lake Avalanche with rocky wall
    And Henderson’s dark-wooded shore,
  Your echoes linger still and call
    Unto my soul forevermore.

  Wallace Bruce.

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[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.

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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.

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