traders are passing through, though zest is given the present exploration by its warlike history of two centuries. LAKE GEORGE. Upon the southeastern border of the Adirondacks is Lake George, its head or southern end being nine miles north of Glen's Falls on the Hudson River. No American lake has had so many songs of praise; it is a gem among the mountains, its picturesque grandeur giving it the deserved title of the American Como. It reminds the Englishman of Windermere and the Scot of charming Loch Katrine, for while it is larger, it holds a place in our scenery akin to both those famous lakes. Embowered amid high hills, a crystal mirror set in among cliffs and forest-clad mountains, their wild and rugged features are constantly reflected in its clear spring waters. Its scenery mingles the gentle and picturesque with the bold and magnificent. George Bancroft, referring to its warlike history, says: "Peacefully rest the waters of Lake George between their ramparts of highlands. In their pellucid depth the cliffs and the hills and the trees trace their images, and the beautiful region speaks to the heart, teaching affection for nature." It is long and narrow, having more the character of a river than a lake, lying almost north and south, in a deep trough among the mountains, its waters discharging from the north end into Lake Champlain, and while thirty-six miles long, it is nowhere more than two or three miles wide. Washing the eastern verges of the Adirondacks, the bold ranges give it the rare beauties of scenery always presented by a mountain lake. Its surface is two hundred and forty-three feet above tide-water, and in some places it is over four hundred feet deep, the basin in which it rests being covered with a yellow sand, so that the bottom is visible through the pellucid waters at great depth. It is dotted with romantic islands, beautiful hill-slopes border the shores, and the background rises into dark and bold mountains. This magnificent lake was Horicon, or the "Silvery Water" of the Mohicans, a name which Cooper, the novelist, vainly endeavored to revive for it. The Mohawks called it Andiatarocte, or the "Place where the Lake Closes." The Hurons, as it appeared much like an appendage to Lake Champlain, named it Canaderioit, or the "Tail of the Lake." The first white man who saw it was the young French Jesuit missionary, Isaac Jogues, who had been captured on the St. Lawrence by a band of Mohawks, and was brought through it a captive in 1642, and after horrible maltreatment escaped to Albany. He went home to France, and in 1646 came out again, determined to convert them. His canoe entered its quiet waters on his beneficent mission on the eve of the festival of Corpus Christi, and he named it Lac du Saint Sacrament. He went on to the Mohawk Valley and ministered to them, but soon they murdered him. The French prized its clear and sparkling waters so highly that they were sent to Canada for baptismal uses.