fair side-path, I found, upon reaching Saugerties, that I had made a mistake by not going up the east side and crossing to the same point, but forgot all about it as the terraced Catskills came in view. At Palenville the hard work commenced, pushing the machine to the top, and, after two hours of sweating and puffing, I arrived. Since a boy I had been told there was plenty of room at the top, and so I found it, 1,200 of them, all empty. Notwithstanding that fact, I was obliged to take an apartment on the first floor front, that is, the piazza. The board was very plain, too. The one under me was not only planed but painted. I did not stay long. Distance traveled in six days, 251 miles. CHAPTER III. UP THE CATSKILLS AND ALONG THE ERIE CANAL. Now that the trees are bare, the terraced appearance of the Catskills is plainly visible, and in climbing up by the new mountain road to the Hotel Kaaterskill, along the northern slope of the Kaaterskill Clove, one wonders at first why the numerous little houses scattered all along up this Clove are not in danger of the catastrophe that befell the Willey House in Crawford Notch, New Hampshire. The sides of the Clove are as steep as the Notch, although not as high, but the rock formation of the Catskills preserves these little hamlets. A landslide here would have to go down a gigantic pair of stairs, while in the White Mountains it would be like slipping off a gothic roof. Half an hour's rest was sufficient after the tough climb of four miles up the gentle grade, as they called it, of the new road. It was very steep all the way up, and at places very dangerous, a single wire holding up a row of posts which themselves seemed bent on going over, being the only protection against a fall of fifty feet or more. I reached the falls in the rear of the Laurel House just as the western sun was filling the Clove with rainbows, and after convincing myself with some difficulty that the whole mountain would not tip over if I stepped too heavy, I crawled around the amphitheater, little by little, till the water came down directly between the stairs and myself. The ice all around the pool rose up very much like the crater of a volcano, down into the center of which the water plunged from 150 feet above. While I was creeping along backside of this ice crater there was a loud crack, loud enough to be heard above all the other noises, and my feet went down about three inches. A thin shale of ice under my feet had broken, that was all, but my heart came up as my feet went down, and it remained about six inches above its ordinary level for some time. That night the lively conversation, accompanied by sly winks, and short little words of the gouty but genial proprietor, J. L. Schult, helped to make the evening pass pleasantly, especially when Mr. Schult, of Dutch descent himself, would slyly refer to the Yankee origin of his wife, a quiet, kind lady of Connecticut parents.