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 and undivided, that the 'home of the brave' might indeed be the 'land of the free.' At Westport we left the boat, and found the stage to Elizabethtown, a _buckboard_, already crowded with passengers. An inn close at hand furnished us the only covered wagon we chanced to see during our ten weeks' sojourn among the Adirondacs. The drive to Elizabethtown (eight miles) was hot and dusty, for we faced the western sun, and the long summer drought was just then commencing to make itself felt. Nevertheless, there was beauty enough by the wayside to make one forget such minor physical annoyances. As the road rose over the first hills, the views back, over the lake and toward those hazy, dreamy-looking Vermont mountains, seemed a leaf from some ancient romance, wherein faultless knights errant sought peerless lady loves with golden locks flowing to their tiny feet, and the dragons were all on the outside, dwellers in dark caverns and noisome dens. In our day, I fear, we have not improved the matter, for the dark caverns seem to have passed within, and the dragons have been adopted as familiars. By and by, on some arid spots, appeared the low, spreading juniper, which we had previously known only as the garden pet of an enthusiastic tree fancier. And thus, perhaps, the virtues which here we cultivate by unceasing care and watchfulness, will, when we are translated to some wider sphere, nearer to the Creator of all, burst upon us as simple, natural gifts to the higher and freer intelligences native to that sphere.