sheet of water, about five miles long
and two or three wide. It is divided down the centre by three islands,
charmingly wooded. The surrounding mountains are high, and at the
north-easterly end rises Whiteface, nearly, if not quite, 5,000 feet in
height, the lower portion clad in deciduous trees, the middle in spruce,
and the upper rising bare and white, with a great slide of many hundred
feet extending from the top toward the lake, and marking out the steep
pathway by which the ascent must be made. Bennet's Pond is about a mile
and a half long, and half a mile broad. Bennet is a contraction of
Benedict--Benedictus--Blessed--and never, surely, did blue expanse of
limpid crystal better merit the appellation--Lake of the Blessed. Its
shores are gently sloping, and beyond the nearer hills rise the giant
summits of the highest peaks. These two sheets of water are within a
quarter of a mile of each other, but have no communication, and are
divided by a ridge of land, chiefly cleared, from whose top the view is
as beautiful as any view from the same elevation to be obtained in
America. To the north lies Lake Placid, with its shining waves, its
islands, and the stately Whiteface; and to the south, the
heaven-reflecting Lake of the Blessed, crowned by the noble dome of
Tahawus, and his splendid retinue, Colden, McMartin, McIntire, Wallface,
Dial Mountain, Nipple Top, and Moriah. To the east and west are wooded
hills, completing the panorama, and enclosing a scene as enchanting as
any single one the writer ever looked upon.

The following day our host, who had meantime returned, drove us down
through the Wilmington Pass to Upper Jay, and thence through Keene to
the Keene Flats, a distance in all of between twenty and twenty-five
miles.

The Wilmington Pass, though not so rough and rugged as its far-famed
rival, the Indian Pass, is far more beautiful, and quite as majestic.
The great cliffs overhanging the road, and the swift Au Sable, the fine
rapids, and the fall of over a hundred feet, the noble views of
Whiteface and the dark, steep peaks rising round it, all combine to
render this one of the most impressive mountain chasms we have ever
visited. After passing through the defile, we left the West Branch of
the Au Sable, and crossed a low ridge to Upper Jay, where we again came
upon the East Branch, and ploughed our way through heavy sands to Keene,
where we dined, and whence the road up the valley to the Keene Flats
becomes