The fulsome and unqualified praises which have been bestowed on these really beautiful and justly celebrated lakes incline one to expect too much, and to overestimate their sublimity. This element, so ever present on the lakes of Scotland, is here often lacking. There is, however, a cleanliness in the remarkably irregular outline of their shores, and a beautiful decoration made by varying tinted and luxuriant vegetation, that largely compensates for a lack of vast boldness, and of great and precipitous rocky walls; and enough mountain views are in the near distance to give the scenery a majestic appearance, at times even grand in general effect. The heavy woodlands, with here and there a craggy cliff, as at the Eagle's Nest, combine to produce a charm not found about ordinary lakes. Yet it must in justice be said that our Lake George, and parts of Winnepiseogee, are their equals. The upper lake, at its westerly end, contains twelve islands, which in the aggregate cover six acres,--none of them, however, containing more than one acre, and some of them less than a quarter of one. McCarthy's is the one first reached. Arbutus is another, and the largest in the lake. It takes its name from the shrub, _arbutus unendo_. The leaves are a glossy green, and so arranged at the ends of the branches, that the waxen, flesh-like blossoms, as they hang in graceful racemes, or the later crimson fruit, seem embraced by a mantle of the richest verdure. All the islands abound in ivy, and the rocks and trees are often thoroughly bedecked with it. This lake is surely the finest of the three, and is so mainly from the fact of its having these islands and the great irregularity of the shore, embellished by the beautiful accompanying foliage. Being more immediately in the vicinity of the highlands, it has much of stern mountain effect and grandeur. From some points of view this little sheet of water appears to be entirely land-locked. Towards the lower end it becomes narrow, and is only a strip of water half a mile long. This is called Newfoundland Bay. On from this it is a yet narrower stream, varying from thirty to one hundred feet wide, and two miles long, which is the connecting part with the middle lake. To add a fascination, and intensify the interest of the tourist, every rock of respectable dimensions, and every island or cove, has its high-sounding name; for we pass Coleman's Eye, the Man of War, the Four Friends. We now arrive at the Eagle's Nest, a craggy formation 700 feet above the water, in the rugged clefts of which the eagle builds its eyrie. The young birds are taken from the nest between the middle of June and the first of July, and the rocks are so precipitous that the nests are only reached by means of ropes let down from above.