the Whitehall and Rutland train usually
awaits the arrival of said boat. At nine o'clock we reached Albany, and
one of our number spent a dreary day, battling with headache and the
ennui of a little four year old, who could extract no amusement from the
unsuggestive walls of a hotel parlor. About five in the afternoon we
left for Whitehall, where we purposed passing the night. This movement
did not one whit expedite the completion of our journey, but offered a
change of place, and an additional hour of rest in the morning, as the
lake-boat train from Whitehall was the same that left Albany shortly
after seven.

We found Whitehall a homely little town, in a picturesque situation, on
the side of a steep hill, past which winds the canal, and under which
thundered the train that on the following morning bore us to the lake,
where the pleasant steamboat 'United States' awaited her daily cargo.
The upper portion of Lake Champlain is very narrow, and the channel
devious; the shores are sometimes marshy, sometimes rocky, and the
bordering hills have softly swelling outlines. Our day was hazy, and the
Green Mountains of Vermont seemed floating in some species of celestial
atmosphere suddenly descended upon that fair State. We passed the
Narrows (a singular, rocky cleft, through which flows the lake), and
soon after came to Ticonderoga, with its ruined fort and environing
hills.

After leaving Crown Point, the lake becomes much wider, and at Port
Henry spreads out into a noble expanse of water. Behind Port Henry, the
Adirondac peaks already begin to form a towering background. Westport,
however, has a still more beautiful situation. The lake there is very
broad, the sloping shores are wooded, the highest peaks of the Green
Mountains are visible to the east and northeast, and the Adirondacs
rise, tier after tier, toward the west.

On the boat were wounded soldiers going to their homes. Poor fellows!
They had left their ploughs and their native hills, to find wounds and
fevers in Virginia. When one looked upon the tranquil lake and
halo-crowned mountains, it seemed almost impossible that the passions of
evil men should have power to draw even that placid region into the
vortex, and hurl back its denizens scarred and scathed, to suffer amid
its beauty. And yet were these men the very marrow and kernel of the
landscape, the defenders of the soil, the patriots who were willing to
give themselves that their country might remain one