Voyage of The Paper Canoe
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N. H. Bishop >> Voyage of The Paper Canoe
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"Such is the nature of the navigation between
tide-water on the Hudson and St. Lawrence and
the upper lakes. The magnitude of the
commerce of the Northwest has compelled the
enlargement of the Erie and Oswego canals from
boats of seventy-eight to two hundred and ten
tons, while the St. Lawrence and Welland canals
have also been enlarged since their first
construction. A further enlargement of the Erie
and Champlain canals is now strongly urged in
consequence of the want of the necessary
facilities of transport for the ever increasing western
trade. The object of the Caughnawaga Ship-canal
is to connect Lake Champlain with the St.
Lawrence by the least possible distance, and
with the smallest amount of lockage. When
built, it will enable the vessel or propeller to
sail from the head of lakes Superior or Michigan
without breaking bulk, and will enable such
vessels to land and receive cargo at Burlington and
Whitehall, from whence western freights can be
carried to and from Boston, and throughout New
England, by railway cheaper than by any other
route.
"It will possess the advantage, when the
Welland Canal is enlarged and the locks of the St.
Lawrence Canal lengthened, of passing vessels
of eight hundred and fifty tons' burden, and with
that size of vessel (impossible on any other route)
of improved model, with facilities for loading and
discharging cargoes at both ends of the route, in
the length of the voyage without transshipment,
in having the least distance between any of
the lake ports and a seaport, and in having the
shortest length of taxed canal navigation. The
Construction of the Caughnawaga Canal, when
carried out, will remedy the difficulties which
now exist and stand in the way of an
uninterrupted water communication between the
western states and the Atlantic seaboard."
From Rouse's Point we proceeded to a
picturesque point which jutted into the lake below
Chazy Landing, and was sheltered by a grove
of trees into which we hauled the Mayeta.
Bodfish's woodcraft enabled him to construct a
wigwam out of rails and rubber blankets, where we
quietly resided until Monday morning. The
owner of the point, Mr. Trombly, invited us to
dinner on Sunday, and exhibited samples of a
ton of maple sugar which he had made from the
sap of one thousand trees.
On Monday, July 20th, we rowed southward.
Our route now skirted the western shore of
Lake Champlain, which is the eastern boundary
of the great Adirondack wilderness. Several of
the tributaries of the lake take their rise in this
region, which is being more and more visited
by the hunter, the fisherman, the artist, and the
tourist, as its natural attractions are becoming
known to the public. The geodetical survey
of the northern wilderness of New York state,
known as the Adirondack country, under the
efficient and energetic labors of Mr. Verplanck
Colvin, will cover an area of nearly five
thousand square miles. In his report of the great
work he eloquently says:
"The Adirondack wilderness may be
considered the wonder and the glory of New York.
It is a vast natural park, one immense and
silent forest, curiously and beautifully broken
by the gleaming waters of a myriad of lakes,
between which rugged mountain-ranges rise as
a sea of granite billows. At the northeast the
mountains culminate within an area of some
hundreds of square miles; and here savage,
treeless peaks, towering above the timber line, crowd
one another, and, standing gloomily shoulder to
shoulder, rear their rocky crests amid the frosty
clouds. The wild beasts may look forth from
the ledges on the mountain-sides over unbroken
woodlands stretching beyond the reach of sight
-- beyond the blue, hazy ridges at the horizon.
The voyager by the canoe beholds lakes in
which these mountains and wild forests are
reflected like inverted reality; now wondrous
in their dark grandeur and solemnity, now
glorious in resplendent autumn color of pearly
beauty. Here -- thrilling sound to huntsman --
echoes the wild melody of the hound,
awakening the solitude with deep-mouthed bay as he
pursues the swift career of deer. The quavering
note of the loon on the lake, the mournful hoot
of the owl at night, with rarer forest voices
have also to the lover of nature their peculiar
charm, and form the wild language of this forest.
"It is this region of lakes and mountains --
whose mountain core is well shown by the
illustration, 'the heart of the Adirondacks' -- that
our citizens desire to reserve forever as a public
forest park, not only as a resort of rest for
themselves and for posterity, but for weighty reasons of
political economy. For reservoirs of water for the
canals and rivers; for the amelioration of spring
floods by the preservation of the forests
sheltering the deep winter snows; for the salvation of
the timber, -- our only cheap source of lumber
supply should the Canadian and western markets
be ruined by fires, or otherwise lost to us, -- its
preservation as a state forest is urgently
demanded. To the number of those chilly peaks amid
which our principal rivers take their rise, I have
added by measurement a dozen or more over
four thousand feet in height, which were before
either nameless, or only vaguely known by the
names given them by hunters and trappers.
"It is well to note that the final hypsometrical
computations fully affirm my discovery that in
Mount Haystack we have another mountain of
five thousand feet altitude. It may not be
uninteresting also to remark that the difference
between the altitudes of Mount Marcy and Mount
Washington of the White Mountains of New
Hampshire is found to be quite eight hundred
feet. Mount Marcy, Mount MacIntyre, and
Mount Haystack are to be remembered as the
three royal summits of the state.
"The four prominent peaks are --
Mount Marcy{ Mount Tahawus -- "I cleave the clouds,"} 5,402.65
Mount Haystack, 5,006.73
Mount Maclntyre, 5,201.80
Mount Skylight, 4,977.76."
If the general reader will pardon a seeming
digression to gratify the curiosity of some of my
boating friends, I will give from the report of
the Adirondack Survey Mr. Colvin's account
of his singular boat, -- one of the lightest yet
constructed, and weighing only as much as
a hunter's double-barrelled gun.
Mr. Colvin says:
"I also had constructed a canvas boat, of my
own invention, for use in the interior of the
wilderness on such of the mountain lakes as were
inaccessible to boats, and which it would be
necessary to map. This boat was peculiar; no
more frame being needed than could be readily
cut in thirty minutes in the first thicket. It was
twelve feet long, with thin sheet brass prows,
riveted on, and so fitted as to receive the keelson,
prow pieces, and ribs (of boughs), when
required; the canoe being made water-proof with
pure rubber gum, dissolved in naphtha, rubbed
into it."
Page 43 of Mr. Colvin's report informs the
reader how well this novel craft served the
purpose for which it was built.
"September 12 was devoted to levelling and
topographical work at Ampersand Pond, a solitary
lake locked in by mountains, and seldom visited.
There was no boat upon its surface, and in order
to complete the hydrographical work we had
now, of necessity, to try my portable canvas boat,
which had hitherto done service as bed or tent.
Cutting green rods for ribs, we unrolled the boat
and tied them in, lashing poles for gunwales at
the sides, and in a short time our canvas canoe,
buoyant as a cork, was floating on the water.
The guides, who had been unable to believe that
the flimsy bag they carried could be used as a
boat, were in ecstasies. Rude but efficient
paddles were hastily hewn from the nearest tree,
and soon we were all gliding in our ten-pound
boat over the waves of Ampersand, which
glittered in the morning sunlight. To the guides
the boat was something astonishing; they could
not refrain from laughter to find that they were
really afloat in it, and pointed with surprise at
the waves, which could be seen through the
boat, rippling against its sides. With the aid of
the boat, with prismatic compass and sextant, I
was able to secure an excellent map of the lake;
and we almost succeeded in catching a deer,
which was driven into the lake by a strange
hound. The dog lost the trail at the water, and
desiring to put him on the track, we paddled to
him. He scrambled into the boat with an air of
satisfaction, as if he had always travelled in just
such a thing. Soon we had regained the trail,
and making the mountains echo to his voice,
he again pursued the deer on into the trackless
forest.
"Continuing our work, we passed down into
the outlet, where, in trying to effect a landing,
we suddenly came face to face with a large
panther, which had evidently been watching us.
He fled at our approach.
"Our baggage was quickly packed, and the
temporary frame of the canoe having been taken
out and thrown away, we rolled up our boat and
put it in the bottom of a knapsack. . . . The same
day by noon we reached Cold Brook again, here
navigable. In an hour and a half we had
re-framed the canvas, cut out two paddles from a
dry cedar-tree, had dinner, loaded the boat, and
were off; easily gliding down stream to the
Saranac River. Three men, the heaped baggage in
the centre, and the solemn hound, who seemed
to consider himself part of the company, sitting
upright near the prow, forming in all a burden
of about one third of a ton, was a severe test of
the green boughs of which we had made the frame.
"Ascending the Saranac River, we struck out
into the broad Saranac Lake, some six miles
in length, and though the winds and the waves
buffeted us, the canvas sides of the boat
responding elastically to each beat of the waves, we got
safely along till near the Sister Islands, when, the
wind blowing very fresh, the white-capped
rollers began to pitch into the boat. The exertions
of the guides brought us under the lee shore, and
at evening we disembarked at Martin's."
Geographies, guide-books, and historical works
frequently give the length of Lake Champlain as
one hundred and fifty, or at the least one hundred
and forty miles. These distances are not correct.
The lake proper begins at a point near
Ticonderoga and ends not far from the boundary line of
the United States and Canada. Champlain is not
less than one hundred nor more than one hundred
and twelve miles long. The Champlain Canal,
which connects the river that flows from
Whitehall into the lake with the Hudson River, is
sixty-four miles long, ending at the Erie Canal at
Junction Lock, near Troy. From Junction Lock
to Albany, along the Erie Canal, it is six miles;
or seventy miles from Whitehall to Albany by
canal route. This distance has frequently been
given as fifty-one miles.
From the United States boundary line south-ward
it is a distance of seven miles to Isle la
Motte, which island is five and a half miles long
by one and three quarters wide, with a
lighthouse upon its northwest point. From the New
York shore of Monti Bay, across the end of Isle
la Motte to St. Albans, Vermont, is a distance of
thirteen and a half miles. Two miles south of
the island, on the west shore, is Point au Roche
light; and two miles and three quarters south of
it is Rocky Point, the terminus of Long Point.
Next comes Treadwell Bay, three miles across;
then two miles further on is Cumberland Head
and its light-house. West from Cumberland,
three miles across a large bay, is Plattsburgh, at
the mouth of the Saranac River, a town of five
thousand inhabitants. In this vicinity
Commodore Macdonough fought the British fleet in 1814.
These are historic waters, which have witnessed
the scene of many a bloody struggle between
French, English, and Indian adversaries. Off
Cumberland Head, and dividing the lake, is
Grand Isle, twelve miles in length and from
three to four in width.
The village of Port Kent is near the mouth of
the Ausable River, which flows out of the
northern Adirondack country. A few miles from the
lake is the natural wonder, the Ausable Chasm,
which is nearly two miles in length. The river
has worn a channel in the Potsdam sandstone
formation to a depth, in places, of two hundred
feet. Between high walls of rock the river is
compressed in one place to ten feet in breadth,
and dashes wildly over falls and rapids on its
way to Lake Champlain. It is said to rival the
famous Swiss Gorge du Triant.
Schuyler's Island, upon the shore of which we
passed Tuesday night, is nearly in the latitude of
Burlington, Vermont. The distance from Port
Douglass on the west, to Burlington on the east
side of Champlain, over an open expanse of
water, is nine miles and three quarters. We
breakfasted by starlight, and passed Ligonier's
Point early in the day. One mile and a half east
of it is the group of little islands called Four
Brothers. The lake grew narrower as we rowed
southward, until, after passing Port Henry Iron
Works, and the high promontory of Crown Point,
upon which are the ruins of the French Fort
Frederic, built in 1731, it has a width of only
two miles.
At eight o'clock P. M. we dropped anchor
under the banks of Ticonderoga, not far from the
outlet of Lake George. It is four miles by road
between the two lakes. The stream which
connects them can be ascended from Champlain
about two miles to the Iron Works, the
remainder of the river being filled with rapids.
A railroad now (1867) connects lakes George
and Champlain, over which an easy portage can
be made. The ruined walls of Fort
Ticonderoga are near the railroad landing. A little
south of this the lake grows so narrow as to
resemble a river. At its southern end,
twenty-four miles from Ticonderoga, is situated the
town of Whitehall, where the Champlain and
Hudson River Canal forms a junction with Lake
Champlain. This long river-like termination of
Champlain gave to the Indians the fancy of
calling it Tisinondrosa -- "the tail of the lake;"
which in mouths inexperienced with the savage
tongue became corrupted into Ticonderoga.
Wednesday broke upon us a glorious day.
Proceeding three miles to Patterson's Landing,
into the "tail of the lake," I left the Mayeta to
explore on foot the shores of Lake George,
promising Bodfish to join him at Whitehall when
my work should be finished.
CHAPTER IV. FROM LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN TO THE HUDSON RIVER.
THE DISCOVERY OF LAKE GEORGE BY FATHER JOGUES. -- A
PEDESTRIAN JOURNEY. -- THE HERMIT OF THE NARROWS. --
CONVENT OF ST. MARY'S OF THE LAKE. -- THE PAULIST
FATHERS. -- CANAL-ROUTE FROM LAKE CHAMPLAIN TO
ALBANY. -- BODFISH RETURNS TO NEW JERSEY. -- THE LITTLE
FLEET IN ITS HAVEN OF REST.
In the last chapter I gave, from seemingly
good authority, the appellation of the narrow
terminal water of the southern end of Lake
Champlain, "the tail of the lake." Another
authority, in describing Lake George, says:
"The Indians named the lake, on account of the
purity of its waters, Horicon, or 'silvery water;'
they also called it Canderi-oit, or 'the tail of
the lake,' on account of its connecting with Lake
Champlain." Cooper, in his "Last of the
Mohicans," says: "It occurred to me that the
French name of the lake was too complicated,
the American too commonplace, and the Indian
too unpronounceable for either to be used
familiarly in a work of fiction." So he called it
Horicon.
History furnishes us with the following facts
in regard to the discovery of the lake. While
journeying up the St. Lawrence in a fleet of
twelve canoes, on a mission to the friendly
Huron aborigines, Father Isaac Jogues and his two
friends, donnes of the mission, Rene Goupil and
Guillaume Couture, with another Frenchman,
were captured at the western end of Lake of
St. Peter by a band of Iroquois, which was on a
marauding expedition from the Mohawk River
country, near what is now the city of Troy. In
the panic caused by the sudden onslaught of the
Iroquois, the unconverted portion of the thirty-six
Huron allies of the Frenchmen fled into the
woods, while the christianized portion defended
the white men for a while. A reinforcement of
the enemy soon scattered these also, but not
until the Frenchmen and a few of the Hurons
were made captive. This was on the 2d of
August, 1642.
According to Francis Parkman, the author of
"The Jesuits in North America," the savages
tortured Jogues and his white companions,
striping off their clothing, tearing out their
fingernails with their teeth, and gnawing their fingers
with the fury of beasts. The seventy Iroquois
returned southward, following the River
Richelieu, Lake Champlain, and Lake George, en
route for the Mohawk towns. Meeting a war
party of two hundred of their own nation on
one of the islands of Champlain, the Indians
formed two parallel lines between which the
captives were forced to run for their lives, while
the savages struck at them with thorny sticks
and clubs. Father Jogues fell exhausted to the
ground, bathed in his own blood, when fire was
applied to his body. At night the young
warriors tormented the poor captives by opening
their wounds and tearing out their hair and
beards. The day following this night of torture
the Indians and their mangled captives reached
the promontory of Ticonderoga, along the base
of which flowed the limpid waters, the outlet of
Lake George. Here the party made a portage
through the primeval forests, carrying their
canoes and cargoes on their backs, when suddenly
there broke upon their view the dark blue waters
of a beautiful lake, which Mr. Parkman thus
eloquently describes:
"Like a fair naiad of the wilderness it
slumbered between the guardian mountains that
breathe from crag and forest the stern poetry of
war. But all then was solitude; and the clang
of trumpets, the roar of cannon, and the deadly
crack of the rifle had never as yet awakened
their angry echoes. Again the canoes were
launched and the wild flotilla glided on its way,
now in the shadow of the heights, now on the
broad expanse, now among the devious
channels of the Narrows, beset with woody islets
where the hot air was redolent of the pine, the
spruce, and the cedar,-- till they neared that
tragic shore where, in the following century,
New England rustics battled the soldiers of
Dieskau, where Montcalm planted his batteries,
where the red cross waved so long amid the
smoke, and where, at length, the summer night
was hideous with carnage, and an honored name
was stained with a memory of blood. The
Indians landed at or near the future site of Fort
William Henry, left their canoes, and with their
prisoners began their march for the nearest
Mohawk town."
Father Jogues lived among his captors until
the fall of 1643, when he escaped in a vessel
from the Dutch settlement of Rensselaerswyck
(Albany), to which place the Iroquois had gone
to trade with the inhabitants. He arrived at the
Jesuit college of Rennes, France, in a most
destitute condition, on the 5th of January, 1644,
where he was joyfully received and kindly cared
for. When he appeared before Queen Anne of
Austria, the woman who wore a diadem thought
it a privilege to kiss his mutilated hands. -- In the
Roman Catholic church a deformed or mutilated
priest cannot say mass; he must be a perfect
man in body and mind before the Lord. Father
Jogues wished to return to his old missionary
field; so, to restore to him his lost right of saying
mass, the Pope granted his prayer by a special
dispensation. In the spring of 1643 he returned
to the St. Lawrence country to found a new
mission, to be called the Mission of Martyrs. His
Superior at Montreal ordered him to proceed to
the country of the Mohawks, and in company
with Sieur Bourdon, a government engineer, and
six Indians, he followed the Richelieu and
Champlain, which the savages called "the doorway
of the country," until the little party stood on
the northern end of Lake George, on the
evening of Corpus Christi; and with the catholic
spirit of the Jesuit missionary he christened it
Lac St. Sacrement, and this name it bore for a
whole century. On the 18th of October, 1646,
the tomahawk of the savage ended the life
of Father Jogues, who, after suffering many
tortures and indignities from his Iroquois captors,
died in their midst while working for their
salvation in his field of Christian labor.
The right of a discoverer to name new lakes
and rivers is old and unquestioned. A
missionary of the cross penetrated an unexplored
wilderness and found this noblest gem of the lower
Adirondacks, unknown to civilized man.
Impressed with this sublime work of his Creator,
the martyred priest christened it St. Sacrement.
One hundred years later came troops of soldiers
with mouths filled with strange oaths, cursing
their enemies. What respect had they for the
rights of discoverers or martyred missionaries?
So General Johnson, "an ambitious Irishman,"
discarded the Christian name of the lake and
replaced it with the English one of George.
He did not name it after St. George, the patron
saint of England, of whom history asserts that
he "was identical with a native of either
Cappadocia or Cilicia, who raised himself by flattery
of the great from the meanest circumstances to
be purveyor of bacon for the army, and who was
put to death with two of his ministers by a mob,
for peculations, A. D. 361;" but he took that of
a sensual king, George of England, in order to
advance his own interests with that monarch.
For more than a century Lake George was the
highway between Canada and the Hudson River.
Its pure waters were so much esteemed as to be
taken regularly to Canada to be consecrated and
used in the Roman Catholic churches in
baptismal and other sacred rites. The lake was
frequently occupied by armies, and the forts George
and William Henry, at the southern end, possess
most interesting historical associations. The
novelist Cooper made Lake George a region of
romance. To the young generation of
Americans who yearly visit its shores it is an El
Dorado, and the very air breathes love as they
glide in their light boats over its pellucid waters,
adding to the picturesqueness of the scene, and
supplying that need ever felt, no matter what
the natural beauty, -- the presence of man. I
believe even the Garden of Eden itself could
not have been perfect till among its shady
groves fell the shadows of our first parents.
The cool retreats, the jutting promontories, the
moss-covered rocks against which the waves
softly break, -- if these had tongues, they would,
like Tennyson's Brook, "go on forever," for
surely they would never have done telling the
tender tales they have heard. Nor would it be
possible to find a more fitting spot for the
cultivation of love and sentiment than this charming
lake affords; for Nature seems to have created
Lake George in one of her happiest moments.
This lake is about thirty-four miles long, and
varies in width from one to four miles. Its
greatest depth is about the same as that of
Champlain. It possesses (like all the American
lakes when used as fashionable watering-places)
the usual three hundred and sixty-five islands.
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 descendant 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."
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