In our journey from Albany to Plattsburgh, we have indicated various routes to the Adirondacks: By way of Saratoga and North Creek to Blue Mountain Lake following the course of the Hudson which might there for be called "The Hudson Gateway;" via Lake George, Westport, and Elizabethtown, suited for carriage and pedestrian trips, and via Plattsburgh, which might be termed "The Northern Portal." In addition to these it has been my lot to make several trips up the valley of the Sacandaga to Lake Pleasant and Indian Lake, and via Schroon Lake to Sanford and Lake Henderson—and four times to ascend the mountain trail of Tahawas to the tiny rills and fountains of the Hudson, but one trip abides in memory distinct and unrivalled, which may be of service to those who wish to visit in fact or fancy the head waters of the Hudson.
The Tahawas Club
The Tahawas Club.—We took the cars one
bright August morning from Plattsburgh to
Ausable Forks, a distance of twenty miles,
hired a team to Beede's, some thirty miles
distant from the "Forks;" took dinner at
Keene, and pursued our route up the
beautiful valley of the Ausable.
From this point we visited Roaring-Brook
Falls, some four hundred feet high, a very
beautiful waterfall in the evening twilight.
The next morning we started, bright and
early, for the Ausable Ponds. Four miles
brought us to the Lower Ausable. The
historic guide, "old Phelps," rowed us
across the lower lake, pointing out, from
our slowly moving and heavily laden scow,
"Indian Head" on the left, and the "Devil's
Pulpit" on the right, lifted about eight
hundred feet above the level of the lake.
"Phelps" remarked with quaint humor, that he
was frequently likened to his Satanic
Majesty, as he often took clergymen "up thar."
The rocky walls of this lake rise from one
thousand to fifteen hundred feet high, in
many places almost perpendicular. A large
eagle soared above the cliffs, and circled
in the air above us, which we took as a good
omen of our journey.
Upper Ausable
After reaching the southern portion of the
lake, a trail of a mile and a quarter leads
to the Upper Ausable—the gem of the
Adirondacks. This lake, over two thousand
feet above the tide, is surrounded on all
sides by lofty mountains. Our camp was on
the eastern shore, and I can never forget
the sunset view, as rosy tints lit up old
Skylight, the Haystack and the Gothics; nor
can I ever forget the evening songs from a
camp-fire across the lake, or the "bear
story" told by Phelps, a tale never really
finished, but made classic and immortal by
Stoddard, in his spicy and reliable handbook
to the North Woods.
The next morning we rowed across the lake
and took the Bartlett trail, ascending
Haystack, some five thousand feet high, just
to get an appetite for dinner; our guide
encouraging us on the way by saying that
there never had been more than twenty people
before "on that air peak." In fact, there
was no trail, and in some places it was so
steep that we were compelled to go up on all
fours; or as Scott puts it more elegantly in
the "Lady of the Lake":
"The foot was fain
Assistance from the hand to gain."
The view from the summit well repaid the toil. We saw Slide Mountain, near by to the north, and Whiteface far beyond, perhaps twenty-five miles distant; northeast, the Gothics; east, Saw-teeth, Mt. Colvin, Mt. Dix, and the lakes of the Ausable. To the southeast, Skylight; northwest, Tahawas, still foolishly styled on some of our maps, Mt. Marcy. The descent of Haystack was as easy as Virgil's famous "Descensus Averni." We went down in just twenty minutes. The one that reached the bottom first simply possessed better adaptation for rolling.
Haystack and Camp Colden
One mile from the foot of Haystack brought
us to Panther Gorge Camp, appropriately
named, one of the wildest spots in the
Adirondacks. We remained there that night
and slept soundly, although a dozen of us
were packed so closely in one small camp
that no individual could turn over without
disarranging the whole mass. Caliban and
Trinculo were not more neighborly, and
Sebastian, even sober, would have been fully
justified in taking us for "a rare monster"
with twenty legs.
The next morning we ascended Tahawas, but
saw nothing save whirling clouds on its
summit. Twice since then we have had better
fortune, and looked down from this mountain
peak, five thousand three hundred and
forty-four feet above the sea, upon the
loveliest mountain landscape that the sun
ever shone upon. We went down the western
slope of Tahawas, through a driving rain, to
Camp Colden, where, with clothes hung up to
dry, we looked like a party of New
Zealanders preparing dinner, hungry enough,
too, to make an orthodox meal of each other.
The next day the weather cleared up, and we
made a trip of two miles over a rough
mountain trail to Lake Avalanche, whose
rocky and precipitous walls form a fit
christening bowl, or baptistery-font for the
infant Hudson.
Returning to Camp Colden and resuming our
western march, two miles brought us to
Calamity Pond, where a lone monument marks
the spot of David Henderson's death, by the
accidental discharge of a pistol. Five miles
from this point brought us to the "Deserted
Village," or the Upper Adirondack Iron
Works, with houses and furnaces abandoned,
and rapidly falling into decay. Here we
found a cheery fireside and cordial welcome.
Had I time to picture this level,
grass-grown street, with ten or fifteen
square box-looking houses, windowless, empty
and desolate; a school-house with its long
vacation of twenty-three years; a bank with
heavy shutters and ponderous locks, whose
floor, Time, the universal burglar, had
undermined; two large furnaces with great
rusty wheels, whose occupation was gone
forever; a thousand tons of charcoal,
untouched for a quarter of a century;
thousands of bricks waiting for a builder; a
real haunted house, whose flapping
clap-boards contain more spirits than the
Black Forests of Germany—a village so
utterly desolate, that it has not even the
vestige of a graveyard—if I could picture to
you this village, as it appeared to me that
weird midnight, lying so quiet, "under the
light of the solemn moon," you would realize
as I did then, that truth is indeed stranger
than fiction, and that Goldsmith in his
"Deserted Village" had not overdrawn the
description of desolate Auburn.
Deserted Village
By special request, we were permitted to
sleep that night in the Haunted House and no
doubt listened to the first crackling that
the old fire-place had known for years. Many
bedsteads in the old building were still
standing, so we only needed bedding from the
hotel to make us comfortable. As we went to
sleep we expressed a wish to be interviewed
in the still hours of the night by any
ghosts or spirits who might happen to like
our company; but the spirits must have been
absent on a visit that evening, for we slept
undisturbed until the old bell, suspended in
a tree, rang out the cheery notes of "trout
and pickerel." We understand that the
Haunted House from that night lost its
old-time reputation, and is now frequently
brought into requisition as an "Annex,"
whenever the hotel or "Club House," as it is
now called, happens to be full. The
"Deserted Village" is rich in natural
beauty. Lakes Henderson and Sanford are near
at hand, and the lovely Preston Ponds are
only five miles distant.
Resuming our march through Indian Pass,
under old Wall-Face Mountain, we reached a
comfortable farmhouse at sunset, near North
Elba, known by the name of Scott's. The next
morning we visited John Brown's house and
grave by the old rock, and read the
beautiful inscription, "Bury me by the Old
Rock, where I used to sit and read the word
of God."
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.
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.
In this hasty sketch I have had little space
to indulge in picture-painting. I passed
Bridal-Veil Fall without a reference. I was
tempted to loiter on the banks of the
Feldspar and the bright Opalescent, but I
passed by without even picking a pebble from
the clear basins of its sparkling cascades.
I passed the "tear of the clouds," four
thousand feet above the tide—that fountain
of the Hudson nearest to the sky, without
being beguiled into poetry. I have not
ventured upon a description of a sunrise
view from the summit of Tahawas, of the
magic effect of light above clouds that
clothe the surrounding peaks in garments
wrought, it seems, of softest wool, until
mist and vapor dissolve in roseate colors,
and the landscape lies before us like an
open book, which many glad eyes have looked
upon again and again. I have left it for
your guides to tell you, by roaring
camp-fires, long stories of adventure in
trapping and hunting, of wondrous fishes
that grow longer and heavier every season,
although captured and broiled many and many
a year ago—trout and pickerel literally
pickled in fiction, served and re-served in
the piquant sauce of mountain vocabulary. In
brief, I have kept my imagination and
enthusiasm under strict control. But, after
all, the Adirondacks are a wonderland, and
we, who dwell in the Hudson and Mohawk
valleys, are happy in having this great park
of Nature's making at our very doors.
It has charms alike for the hunter, the
angler, the artist, the writer, and the
scientist. Let us rejoice, therefore, that
the State of New York is waking at last to
the fact, that these northern mountains were
intended by nature to be something more than
lumber ranches, to be despoiled by the axe,
and finally revert to the State for "taxes"
in the shape of bare and desolate wastes.
Nor can the most practical legislator charge
those, who wish to preserve the Adirondack
woods, with idle sentiment; as it is now an
established scientific fact that the
rainfall of a country is largely dependent
upon its forest land. If the water supply of
the north were cut off, to any perceptible
degree, the Hudson, during the months of
July and August, would be a mere sluice of
salt water from New York to Albany; and the
northern canals, dependent on this supply,
would become empty and useless ditches. Our
age is intensely practical, but we are
fortunate in this, that so far as the
preservation of the Adirondacks is
concerned, utility, common sense, and the
appreciation of the beautiful are
inseparably blended.
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.
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.