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.

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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.

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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.