Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/191

 Lake Winnipiscogec in October.

��i8i

��Then we pass through a narrow strait between two bold, dark headlands, where the deep water boils and whirls and foams. Anon we turn a point, and lie as in a cradle in a little emer- ald bay, with a wooded beach at one side sloping to the crinkling waves. A verdant thicket comes down to the marge at two points. There is grass between, and a tufted hemlock over- head. Great Nature made this as a spot where she might take her lovers to her heart. Diana's white limbs would shine like pearl beneath those translucent waters. It is like an Ar- cadian scene, or a pictured dell in an Ionian isle. Perhaps some Indian Undine had her home there in the old time. A group of girls on the shore beneath the umbrageous foliage re- minds us of the scene in the Odyssey where Nausicaa and her maids come down to the tide to comfort Ulysses the wanderer.

To the left, crowning the delightful slope of a hill, is Centre Harbor, one of the points of rest on the shores of the lake. We have steamed ten miles since we left Wiers Landing, and it has been like a voyage to another world. Here, for a time, we rest. A spacious hotel with broad piazzas tempts us to enter. We wander up a winding walk, and through arched, vine-covered arbors strung along the flower-bordered path, to the portal. It is the Senter House, five hundred and fifty-three feet above the level of the sea, and commanding an extend- ed and delightful view of the lake. Some of the most enchanting drives in the world can be had in this vicin- ity. One of the most interesting ex- cursions is to the summit of Red Hill, which rises five miles distant, and

��stands some over two thousand feet above the sea. The eminence owes its name to the fact that it is covered with the uva ursa, the leaves of which have the most vivid red color imagin- able in the autumn. Every one visits it, and it is the place above all others to study the lake, which is spread, with all its varied beauty of mirror- ing waters, green islands, graceful curving shores, and picturesque coves, at its feet. Says Starr King, — "Who- ever misses the view from Red Hill loses the most fascinating and thor- oughly enjoyable view from a modern mountain height that can be gained from any eminence in the tourist's path."

Though it is still late in the season, the hotels are full. New York, Bos- ton, and Providence have sent their elite, and Philadelphia and Chicago have representatives here. What a wonderful glimpse of the great un- known world of wealth and fashion is opened to the bashful rustic, as, standing on the broad hotel piazza at Centre Harbor, he witnesses the ar- rival of the six-horse Conway stages as they roll down from the mountains sixty miles away, and dash up to the hotel steps, followed by the descent of linen-wrapped travellers, hardly recognizable under the extra covering of mountain dust, and then the bang and rattle of big "Saratogas," which, recklessly tossed from the lofty perches to the piazza, envelop him in a cloud of choking, blinding dust ! With what awe he watches the pretty groups of low-voiced, daintily dressed "• city boarders," as they flit about the balconies and through the long parlors. Ah ! fashion reigns here, the same as on Tremont street or Fifth avenue.

�� �