Voyage of the Paper Canoe: A Geographical Journey of 2500 miles, from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, during the years 1874-5. — John Shaqi
Voyage of the Paper Canoe: A Geographical Journey of 2500 miles, from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, during the years 1874-5.Bishop, Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes)
History
Voyage of the Paper Canoe: A Geographical Journey of 2500 miles, from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, during the years 1874-5.
Bishop, Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes)
Atlantic Coast (Canada) -- Description and travel; Atlantic Coast (U.S.) -- Description and travel; Bishop, Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes), 1837-1902 -- Travel -- Canada, Eastern; Bishop, Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes), 1837-1902 -- Travel -- United States; Canada, Eastern -- Description and trave
When I left the Mayeta I followed a narrow footpath to a rough mountain
road, which in turn led me through the forests towards Lake George. In
an isolated dell I found the home of one Levi Smith, who piloted me
through the woods to the lake, and ferried me in a skiff across to
Hague, when I dined at the hotel, and resumed my journey along the
shores to Sabbath Day Point, where at four o'clock P. M. a steamer on
its trip from Ticonderoga to the south end of the lake stopped and took
me on board. We steamed southward to where high mountains shut in the
lake, and for several miles threaded the "Narrows" with its many pretty
islands, upon one of which Mr. J. Henry Hill, the hermit-artist, had
erected his modest home, and where he toiled at his studies early and
late, summer and winter. Three goats and a squirrel were his only
companions in this lonely but romantic spot.
During one cold winter, when the lake was frozen over to a depth of two
feet, and the forests were mantled in snow, Mr. Hill's brother, a civil
engineer, made a visit to this icy region, and the two brothers surveyed
the Narrows, making a correct map of that portion of the lake, with all
its islands carefully located. Mr. Hill afterwards made an etching of
this map, surrounding it with an artistic border representing objects of
interest in the locality.
Late in the afternoon the steamer landed me at Crosbyside, on the east
shore, about a mile from the head of the lake, resting beneath the shady
groves of which I beheld one of the most charming views of Lake George.
Early the following morning I took up my abode with a farmer, one
William Lockhart, a genial and eccentric gentleman, and a relation of
Sir Walter Scott's son-in-law. Mr. Lockhart's little cottage is half a
mile north of Crosbyside, and near the high bluff which Mr. Charles
O'Conor, the distinguished lawyer of New York city, presented to the
Paulist Fathers, whose establishment is on Fifty-ninth Street in that
metropolis. Here the members of the new Order come to pass their summer
vacations, bringing with them their theological students. The Paulists
are hard workers, visiting and holding "missions" in Minnesota,
California, and other parts of the United States. They seem to feel
forcibly the truth expressed in these lines, which are to be found in
"Aspirations of Nature," a work written by the founder of their order,
Father Hecker: "Existence is not a dream, but a solemn reality. Life was
not given to be thrown away on miserable sophisms, but to be employed in
earnest search after truth."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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