e
white-capped rollers began to pitch into the boat. The exertions
of the guides brought us under the lee shore, and at evening we
disembarked at Martin's."

Geographies, guide-books, and historical works frequently give the
length of Lake Champlain as one hundred and fifty, or at the least one
hundred and forty miles. These distances are not correct. The lake
proper begins at a point near Ticonderoga and ends not far from the
boundary line of the United States and Canada. Champlain is not less
than one hundred nor more than one hundred and twelve miles long. The
Champlain Canal, which connects the river that flows from Whitehall into
the lake with the Hudson River, is sixty-four miles long, ending at the
Erie Canal at Junction Lock, near Troy. From Junction Lock to Albany,
along the Erie Canal, it is six miles: or seventy miles from Whitehall
to Albany by canal route. This distance has frequently been given as
fifty-one miles.

From the United States boundary line southward it is a distance of seven
miles to Isle la Motte, which island is five and a half miles long by
one and three quarters wide, with a light-house upon its northwest
point. From the New York shore of Monti Bay, across the end of Isle la
Motte to St. Albans, Vermont, is a distance of thirteen and a half
miles. Two miles south of the island, on the west shore, is Point au
Roche light; and two miles and three quarters south of it is Rocky
Point, the terminus of Long Point. Next comes Treadwell Bay, three miles
across; then two miles further on is Cumberland Head and its
light-house. West from Cumberland, three miles across a large bay, is
Plattsburgh, at the mouth of the Saranac River, a town of five thousand
inhabitants. In this vicinity Commodore Macdonough fought the British
fleet in 1814. These are historic waters, which have witnessed the scene
of many a bloody struggle between French, English, and Indian
adversaries. Off Cumberland Head, and dividing the lake, is Grand Isle,
twelve miles in length and from three to four in width.

The village of Port Kent is near the mouth of the Ausable River, which
flows out of the northern Adirondack country. A few miles from the lake
is the natural wonder, the Ausable Chasm, which is nearly two miles in
length. The river has worn a channel in the Potsdam sandstone formation
to a depth, in places, of two hundred feet. Between high walls of rock
the river is compressed in one place to ten feet in br