A soft, dazzling splendour filled the air. Snowy banks and drifts of
cloud were floating slowly over a wide and wondrous land. Vast sweeps
of forest, shining waters, mountains near and far, the deepest green
and the palest blue, changing colours and glancing lights, and all so
silent, so strange, so far away, that it seemed like the landscape of a
dream. One almost feared to speak, lest it should vanish.

Right below us the Lower Saranac and Lonesome Pond, Round Lake and the
Weller Ponds, were spread out like a map. Every point and island was
clearly marked. We could follow the course of the Saranac River in all
its curves and windings, and see the white tents of the hay-makers on
the wild meadows. Far away to the northeast stretched the level fields
of Bloomingdale. But westward all was unbroken wilderness, a great sea
of woods as far as the eye could reach. And how far it can reach from
a height like this! What a revelation of the power of sight! That faint
blue outline far in the north was Lyon Mountain, nearly thirty miles
away as the crow flies. Those silver gleams a little nearer were the
waters of St. Regis. The Upper Saranac was displayed in all its length
and breadth, and beyond it the innumerable waters of Fish Creek were
tangled among the dark woods. The long ranges of the hills about the
Jordan bounded the western horizon, and on the southwest Big Tupper Lake
was sleeping at the base of Mount Morris. Looking past the peak of Stony
Creek Mountain, which rose sharp and distinct in a line with Ampersand,
we could trace the path of the Raquette River from the distant waters
of Long Lake down through its far-stretched valley, and catch here and
there a silvery link of its current.

But when we turned to the south and east, how wonderful and how
different was the view! Here was no widespread and smiling landscape
with gleams of silver scattered through it, and soft blue haze resting