Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/185

 Lake Winnipiseogcc in October

��^1S

��sachusetts competitors, but as the water needs must ruu through their canals to get to the state line, they find it profitable and convenient to leave the management of the gate to others. It takes about three davs for the water to run from The Wiers to Lowell, "When a drouth is threatened at the upper place, the agent at the lake is notified to send down a sup- ply, and the flood is let loose. When there is plenty of water below, the gates are closed. AVhen there is a heav3' shower on the Pemigewasset, or Contoocook, or Nashua, this of course helps swell the Merrimack, and the lake water is not needed. In short, the water is drawn from the lake only when enough cannot be obtained from other sources to do the work. In some seasons of the year the lake will evaporate half an inch a da}', which is as much as is drawn when the gates are up. During fifteen years prior to 1877 the lake was not full; in 1877, 1878, and 1879 it was filled ; while in 1880 it was at no time within six inches of high water mark, and last year was a full foot below the mark.

It is only within a score of years that Winnipiseogee has acquired a distinctive fame as a summer resort. Half a century ago it had an occa- sional straggling admirer, or possibly a company from the back country in the summer season, to appreciate its beauties and enjoy its lonely solitude. Without doubt the modern "dis- coverer" of the lake, in the sense of which we are about to speak, was that noted divine and elegant writer, Rev. Thomas Starr Kino;. Mr. Kins; was the modern Columbus of Winni- piseogee. His errand this way was

��not so much to fish for men as for bass, pike, and salmon, though he never lost an opportunity for either in its season. He was here in 1853, two full centuries after Johnson and Willard first looked over the sparkling tide. His pilgrimages to the spot became annual until his removal to San Francisco in 1860. His name and his descriptions brought the lake gradually to the attention of the sum- mer pleasure-seekers of the great Atlantic cities, and when his book, "The White Hills," came out, Win- nipiseogee was made famous. The tide thus set in motion in this direc- tion was limited at first, consisting of veteran sportsmen who came to rough it, and of a few families of taste and culture who secured board among the farmers on the lake shore. The recent vast expansion of the "vacation fashion," one of the best and most sensible fashions that ever seized the American mind, has poured out floods of city gained wealth upon many a once barren seashore and wilderness solitude, and filled them with a joyous, health-seeking, summer throng of the best classes of people. Among all these new Edens which this surprising exodus has developed, we venture to affirm that not one any- where has a greater variety and abun- dance of natural advantages, and few have greater artificial improvements of the right sort, than this marvellous fairy realm of Lake Winnipiseogee.

Although lacking the great histori- cal interest which enshrines Lake George, the country around Winni- piseogee is by no means uaclassic ground. Several tribes of Indians had their homes around the shores of this lake in former times, and nearly

�� �