e 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.

* * *

The rills
That feed thee rise among the storied rocks
Where Freedom built her battle-tower.

_William Wallace._

* * *

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