Forgotten Treasures #19: THE SPECKLED BROOK TROUT--PART V

THE SPECKLED BROOK TROUT

PART V: THE NEW ADIRONDACKS.
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THE NEW ADIRONDACKS.



The Adirondack Mountains of northeastern New York affords a striking
evidence of the changes which advancing civilization has wrought along our
eastern seaboard. There can be seen the development, almost within a
decade, of a wilderness into a great summer and autumn resort, dotted with
luxurious modern hotels, and traversed by stage-routes and railways.



The sportsman, whether he be hunter or fisherman, familiar with even a
portion of the Adirondack Mountains, more poetically termed the North Woods,
fifteen or twenty years ago, and who now revisits the scenes of his youth,
will find such a visit a dream dispelled, for his is the memory of their
former wildness and beauty, of trout rising on lakes and streams, of deer
roaming the dense woods and drinking from quiet waters, and of a strange,
wild life. With this memory, he now finds a large part of the woods region
peopled for three months of the year with the votaries of fashion, with
steamboats puffing on the lakes and engines shrieking through the forests,
with prosperous villages here and there, and the old wild life gone never to
return.



I open as I write, an old and well-worn book, dear to all older American
sportsmen, written by William C. Prime, and published in 1873, entitled "I
Go a-Fishing," and I turn to two chapters respectively entitled "The Saint
Regis Waters in Olden Times, 1860," and the "Saint Regis Waters Now, 1872."
Would that the venerable author, now I believe a very old man, and long
since unable to handle the rod and gun, could revisit the Saint Regis waters
and paint us their scenes of to-day. The twelve years which elapsed between
his first and second visits seemed to him to have brought many changes, the
most marked of which was the expansion of Paul Smith's first little house,
built in 1858, and holding not more than eight people, to a large hotel,
capable of accommodating 150 guests. On both occasions Mr. Prime had to
drive into Paul Smith's from Port Kent, on Lake Champlain, a distance of
fifty-five miles. The rare old fisherman and lover of nature, floating in
his canoe on the Lower Saint Regis in 1860, wrote as follows: "The day had
died most gloriously. The 'sword of the sun' that had lain across the
forest was withdrawn and sheathed. There was a stillness on land and water
and in the sky that seemed like the presence of an invisible majesty.
Eastward the lofty pine-trees rested their green tops in an atmosphere whose
massive blue seemed to sustain and support them. Westward the rosy tints
along the horizon deepened into crimson around the base of the Saint Regis
hills and faded into black toward the north. No sign of life, human or
inhuman, was anywhere visible or audible except within the little boat where
we two floated; and peace, that peace that reigns where no man is-that peace
that never dwells in the abodes of men-here held silent and omnipotent sway.
Then came the wind among the pine-trees. The gloom increased and a ripple
stole over the water. There was a flapping of one of the lily-pads as the
first wave struck them; and then as a breeze passed over us, I threw two
flies on the black ripple. There was a swift rush-a sharp dash and plunge
in the water. Both were struck at the instant, and then I had work before
me that forbade my listening to the voices of the pines. It took five
minutes to kill my fish-two splendid specimens. Meanwhile the rip had
increased and the breeze came fresh and steady. It was too dark now to see
the opposite shore, and the fish rose at every cast. When I had half a
dozen of the same sort, and one that lacked only an ounce of being full four
pounds, we pulled up the killeck and paddled homeward around the wooded
point. The moon rose, and the scene on the lake now became magically
beautiful. The mocking laugh of the loon was the only cause of complaint in
that evening of splendor. Did you ever hear that laugh?" Again Mr. Prime
well says: "One who has in former years lived in the woods forms a stronger
attachment for that life than a man ever forms for any other. The affection
which we have for the companions of our solitude is very strong. Hence,
when I find myself in the woods the old sights and sounds come back with
such force that I cannot tear myself away."



I have given Mr. Prime's charming picture of the Saint Regis waters forty
and twenty-five years ago so that I might the better, in my feebler way,
sketch them to-day, and by this contrast emphasize the difference between
our Northern lakes and mountains of the middle and the end of the century.
For the change that has transformed the Saint Regis country from a
wilderness and the delight of sportsmen to a fashionable summer resort, has
also taken place throughout the North Woods, except in a few portions, and
will not be long in taking place there. I reached Paul Smith's on a recent
September evening by a walk of four and a half miles through a settled
country and over a macadamized road from a brick station on the main line of
the Adirondack division of the New York Central, which runs from Utica to
Montreal. Darkness had fallen before I entered a strip of woods through
which the road runs for a mile before it reaches Paul Smith's, and
cherishing the memory of Mr. Prime's picture, as I neared the Saint Regis
waters I listened for the laugh of the loon and the wind among the pines.
So listening I suddenly stepped from the darkness of the woods into a blaze
of light which flashed out from the countless windows of an enormous wooden
hotel, and which were reflected far out on the waters of the lake. There
was no laugh of the loon, but the sound of oars in the rowlocks of numerous
boats, and of men and women's voices "with fashion, not with feeling, softly
freighted." Gone in an instant was Mr. Prime's picture-vanished the dreams
of the sportsman-and I turned with a sigh to the comforts of civilization
and the atmosphere of New York or Newport in the season.



I had heard of the "camps" on the Saint Regis waters, and rising soon after
daybreak the next morning, I engaged a guide and was rowed by him in an
Adirondack boat across the Lower Saint Regis through Spitfire Pond and
around the beautiful wooded shores of the Upper Saint Regis. The morning
was very beautiful. Far to the west the Saint Regis Mountains lifted their
pine-crowned peaks into the hazy blue, while the sun, just risen, made the
dancing ripple of the lake seem like ridges of burning gold. The wind blew
soft and cool, and there was that vigor and life in the air which one only
finds in the mountains at sunrise. A procession of boats laden with
supplies for the "camps" plied between them and the hotel, and two naphtha
launches puffed hither and thither. I saw the "camps" of Henry L.
Hotchkiss, Whitelaw Reid, Charles A. Barney, H. McKay Twombly, Anson Phelps
Stokes, P. H. McAlpin, a son-in-law of William Rockefeller, and others.
They are, for the most part, really villas, with sea-walls, summer-houses,
and every appliance of comfort and luxury. The guide told me that in some
of these "camps" there was hot and cold water, and in one electric lights,
and it all seemed to me like playing at roughing it, and as if the title
"camp" was the only link that connected these modern summer villas with the
old free life of the woods. Why does not some modern essayist write of and
on "the millionnaire of the wilderness"? One finds strange things in the
woods, but the sportsman and true lover of nature can find no stranger bird
in the North Woods than the modern millionnaire. I believe that the first
of these "campers" on the Upper Saint Regis went in about fifteen years ago,
to the astonishment of the guides and natives, armed with a hair-mattress,
an air-pillow, and a nameless article of domestic utility. Now he brings
electric lights and naphtha launches. It unnecessary to say that there is
little fishing in the Saint Regis waters to-day, and a report that a deer
was seen near there this year is not generally accepted. So was my dream
dispelled.


But if Paul Smith, with the Saint Regis region, is now solely a fashionable
resort, what shall be said of Saranac Lake, and especially Lake Placid? I
had heard much of both places, and I visited both. At the former I found a
large village and a hotel-the Ampersand-the most modern, most luxurious, and
most pretentious house in the Adirondack Mountains, under whose electric
lights and in whose dark wooden halls and rooms one feels as if in town in
midwinter, and at the latter I saw a continuous village surrounding its
lower end, four or five barn-like wooden hotels, and golf, croquet, and
tennis in full force. They have golf-links, by the way, at or near all the
Adirondack hotels now. There is, however, a portion of the North Woods
where the man or woman who, whether or not in search of fish and game, loves
the sense of remoteness and the feeling of the wide woods around can still
find sport and an idea at least of primeval wilderness. I refer to the
southwestern and far western sections, and to that central district which
lies west of Port Kent and Port Henry. In the former lie the Fulton chain
of lakes, Long Lake and Lake Massawepie, on whose wooded shores, after a
six-mile drive through the virgin forest, I found the best kept and most
comfortable hotel in the woods, that of Childwold. In the latter region are
Blue Mountain lake and a series of lakes and mountains which are still
sportsmen's resorts, and from which the railroad is still far distant.



There are two stand-points from which to view our Northern lakes and
mountains to-day. I have treated them thus far from that of the sportsman
and lover of the woods. The other stand-point from which to regard them is
that of the student of the development of our summer resorts, and of the
believer in the march of modern improvements. There are five men whom I
hold chiefly responsible for the transformation of the Adirondacks from a
sportsman's paradise to a fashionable summer resort, and these are in order
of precedence: Paul Smith, who entered the woods from Vermont as a guide in
the early fifties; the late Thomas C. Durant, who projected the Adirondack
Railroad, built from Saratoga to North Creek in the early seventies; Le
Grand Cannon, who projected the narrow-gauge Chateaugay Railroad, which was
first built from Plattsburg to Dannemora in 1879, and completed by
successive stages to Saranac Lake and Lake Placid in 1889 and 1890;
"Adirondack" Murray, whose ephemeral but flashing pen-pictures of the "North
Woods" first drew public attention to them and gave him his nom-de-plume
twenty-five years ago, and lastly, Dr. Seward Webb, who finally carried out
his long-cherished plan of building a trunk-line through the heart of the
wilderness from Utica to Montreal in 1891. I should perhaps add to this
list the name of Drs. Loomis, Trudeau, and others who first directed
attention to the Adirondacks as a resort for consumptives and a natural
sanitarium, but I find that the hotel proprietors and many others interested
are not anxious to have this feature of the mountains emphasized. With the
building of the railroads and the consequent bringing of the mountains
within easy access of the cities, and especially New York, the old
boarding-houses and small hotels scattered here and there, and which are
comparatively few in number, have been enlarged or have given place to fine
and expensive structures. Paul Smith's has grown upon and around itself
from a little frame house accommodating eight people to an immense building,
with spacious piazzas and hallways, which can hold nearly 1,000 guests and
is a city in itself. Then comes the Ampersand, a handsome house on Saranac
Lake; and then in succession the fine and well-situated Wawbeek Lodge, at
the foot of the Upper Saranac; Saranac Inn, at the head of the same lake,
and the cluster of large hotels at Lake Placid, beginning with the White
Face Inn and including the Ruisseaumont, Lake Placid, Grand View, and
Stevens Houses. Scattered here and there throughout the mountains there are
also fine or comfortable houses, such as those in the Keene Valley, St.
Hubert's Inn and the Chateaugay, Chazy Lake, and Loon Lake Houses on the
lakes of those names.



END PART V