The right of a discoverer to name new lakes and rivers is old and unquestioned.Amissionary 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.Ibelieve 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."Mr.Lockhart kindly offered to escort me to the convent of St.Mary's on the Lake; and after following the mountain road for a quarter of a mile to the north of the cottage of my companion, we entered the shady grounds of the convent and were kindly received on the long piazza by the Father Superior, Rev.A.F.Hewit, who introduced me to several of his co-laborers, a party of them having just returned from an excursion to the Harbor Islands at the northern end of the Narrows, which property is owned by the Order.
I was told that the members of this new religious establishment numbered about thirty, and that all but four were converts from our Protestant faith.
