boats, and all angry with each other for coming.

However, if you have any capacity of enjoyment, you will still enjoy. Nature does not hide her beauty from her lover because he comes in a crowd. Helen was as beautiful to Menelaus when all the chiefs came wooing, as when she privately dropped the ecstatic "yes," in his enamored ear. So give yourself wholly up to your romance, and if you see Gunnybags passing, and anxiously asking his boatman what time he is likely to get back to the hotel to tea, shout out to him-mentally asking Wordsworth's pardon:

"How richly glows the water's breast

Before us, tinged with evening's hues, While facing thus the silent west,

The boat her silent course pursues.

And see now dark the backward stream,
A little moment past so smiling!
And still, perhaps, with faithless gleam,
Some other loiterers beguiling.

Such views the youthful bard allure,

But, heedless of the following gloom, He dreams their colors shall endure. Till peace go with him to the tombAnd let him nurse his fond deceit,

And what if he must die in sorrow, Who would not cherish dreams so sweet, Though grief and pain may come tomorrow."

There is Diamond Island, too, a nook of romance and twining foliage, with quartz-crystals upon its shores, shining like diamonds. It has its bit of history. also. For Burgoyne used it as a dépôt of military stores, in 1777, and one day in the autumn of that year, Colonel Brown, who had been harrying the

British in the neighborhood of Ticonderoga, came down the lake and fell upon the little garrison of Diamond Island. But the red-coats stood to their arms, and the good Brown left them in possession, and, crossing over to Dunham bay, burnt the vessels he had taken below, and hastened back to Lincoln's camp.

There is Dome island, ingeniously socalled, because it is supposed to resemble a dome. Probably there is a sugarloaf island somewhere in the vicinity; and there is sure to be a sugar-loaf hill. It is a curious inquiry for you to consider as you sail along, looking out for Bolton, whether there was ever a group of six hills of which one was not named sugar-loaf.

At Bolton, Captain H. Wilson keeps an inn, and supplies fishing materials, and provides an uncommonly good din

ner, if you happen on one of the lucky days. Appropriately enough in this neighborhood, as if good fare were a constituent part of the scene, you have Hog island and Hen and Chicken island; names suggestive of the fertility of the imagination that so called them -names of singular harmony with Horicon and Lake San Sacrament.

You glide on into the Narrows, perhaps the loveliest region of the lake. The mountains crowd together; the little islands are more frequent: it is an exquisite combination, and as Parkman says, speaking of the lake, in his history of the conspiracy of Pontiac, which contains a concise and graphic account of the French and English operations around these waters: "It seems like some broad and placid river, inclosed between ranges of lofty mountains." Black Mountain is the most conspic

most poetic spectacle to the imagination in the history of Lake George. Dr. Dwight describes it at its departure from the head of the lake:

"The morning was remarkably light and beautiful, and the fleet moved with exact regularity to the sound of martial music. The ensigns waved and glittered in the sunbeams, and the anticipation of future triumph shone in every eye. Above, beneath, around, the scenery was that of enchantment. Rarely has the sun, since that luminary was first lighted up in the heavens, dawned on such a complication of beauty and magnificence.'

Dr. Dwight was clearly an enthusiastic writer; but the military splendor, the music, and the strange contrast, are well described by Parkman:

"On a brilliant July morning, he (Lord Abercrombie) embarked his whole force for an attack on Ticonderoga. Many of those present have recorded, with admiration, the beauty of the spectacle, the lines of boats filled with troops stretching far down the lake, the flashing of oars, the glitter of weapons, and the music ringing back from crags and rocks, or dying in mellowed strains among the distant mountains."

At Sabbath-day Point, when the flotilla stopped for the night's refreshment, Lord Howe, "the favorite of the

army, " collected a group of officers around him, including Captain Starkhusband of Molly Stark-and debated the chances of the enterprise.

It is recorded that with a prescient melancholy his mind dwelt upon the probably fatal issue. But without murmuring or delaying, when the order was given, the whole force of sixteen thousand men moved from the placid point. Lord Howe led the van. A scholar, a gentleman, a brave young man, we think of him as we do of André, both of them perishing untimely, in a service that was not very glorious, but themselves honorable and noble to the end. We can fancy the young Englishman gazing down the lake as the armament proceeded, and pleasing his eyes and mind with the peaceful beauty of the scene. Yet, as the wild bursts of familiar melody echo in mournful clangor along the mountain-shores, he remembers those who are quietly at home in green England, passing through pleasant lanes to the old church with which his laughing childhood was familiar; and the holy recollections of his home, the calm summer morning on the lake, and the secret presentiment of impending doom, make it truly to Lord Howe a Sabbath-day Point.

Two years before, a party of English, pursued by French Indians,

had made a bold stand upon this point and defeated the enemy; and eighteen years afterward, a party of Americans met a scouting party of Tories and Indians, and routed them with great loss.

Little local stories haunt all the islands and points in this region. Henry Marvin's History of Lake George, and especially that pleasant and valuable book, Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution, will give them to you concisely. The stories are of no peculiar character or especial importance. But every little anecdote is interesting when time has intervened, and made every object seem romantic by mere remote

ness.

Mr. Marvin tells us, as we pass Odell Island, that "some years ago a gentlemen was invited by two or three others to join in a sailing excursion, and they having before partaken somewhat too freely, became so venturesome and reckless, despite the steadily increasing gale, that the fear incited by their apparent recklessness induced him to request them to put him ashore. The boat was ballasted with stone, consequently his alarm, for in case of a capsize she must inevitably go to the bottom. This proposition, instead of producing the desired effect, caused them

to proceed more carelessly in managing the boat. Ridiculing his idea, and considering him as timid, they, to insure his confidence and dissipate all unnecessary fears, secured themselves by portions of the rigging: the man at the helm tied the main-sheet fast to his body, while the others were similarly entangled. Entertaining no hope of their compliance to his wishes, he watched a favorable opportunity, and as they neared Slim Point, which is two and a half miles north of Sabbath-day Point, and the water being shoal, he jumped overboard, and waded to the shore. They, laughing at his timidity and wishing him a pleasant journey, tacked about and were soon far from the land. The rescued one, for so he providentially believed himself, watched their progress with fearful misgivings; his doubts were but momentary, for a flaw of wind struck the frail bark suddenly, and all on board were entombed in a watery grave."

The sagacious reader will instantly remark that such an accident is not peculiar to Lake George, but might have happened upon Lake Champlain. The inexorable historian has but one reply, and that is, that it did

not.

And here we are at Garfield's, in the

But the "leaf-fringed legend" that "haunts about thy shape," O bald gray rock, is this:

In the winter of 1758, during the same old French and English war, Major Rogers, a ranger, while reconnoitering, was surprised by a party of Indians. The brave major wore snowshoes, which are, perhaps, a poor match for moccasins. He rushed up to the top of the mountain, and down to the edge of the rock. Then he threw his knapsack, stored with provisions, down upon the ice, stripped off his snowshoes, and, turning himself about, put them on "hind side before," and, so scrambling, and slipping, and sliding, and running, making all his footmarks, of course, with the toe where the heel ought to be, he crept down a ravine to

the lake, while the tracks looked like

those of a person climbing up from the lake.

Presently the Indians arrived and found the tracks leading down to the edge of the rock, and also the tracks leading up to the edge, and, with many a wisely-grunted ugh, concluded that two persons had met there, and had thrown themselves over the rock rather than encounter the savages. In the midst of their wise conclusion they suddenly beheld the lively major, who had taken his knapsack from the base of the rock, hurrying across the lake upon the ice; whereupon, with equal wisdom, the noblemen of nature concluded that the Great Spirit had a particular regard for Major Rogers, and would, probably, cover his retreat. They, therefore, turned back to smoke a pipe with a flea in the bowl-if you will pardon such a perversion of the proverb, on this laughing morning, and in this gay little Minnehaha.

The legend of Rogers' Slide seems to prove that, if snow-shoes alone are probably poor match for moc