surface is rolling and well adapted to pasturage, being underlaid by the soft shales and slates, easily decaying, of whatever formation, while the plains, with small hills of sand and gravel, show the alluvial deposits. The soil gives character to the scenery. The alluvial grow, the plane tree with many leaves and wide branches; dry soil, the yellow pine and dwarf oak; limestone soil, the butternut. The grasses will flourish in spite of the variable temperature, and hence give the country a capacity for grazing. In the higher sections, the primary granite and labradorite, disintegrating and decaying, form, after a time, a kind of clay, that mingling with the sand and gravel of the drift or transition system, forms in the valleys and by the courses of the streams a productive soil. Ridges or veins of limestone are found in some parts, out of their regular order, but which, split up and crumbled by the action of the water in the seams, and the temperature, give a much needed element to the soil. Beds

of peat, or as they are sometimes called, muck-swamps, are occasionally found, being beds of former lakes, that consist of masses of decayed vegetable matter, such as water plants, trunks, leaves and roots of trees, and a growth of moss. These beds of peat are most useful in agriculture. The sandstone of the tertiary system surrounds, but does not pervade to much extent this region. The soil generally about the streams, lakes, and lower hills is such, that properly improved, will yield a handsome recompense to the labor of the farmer. It produces oats, peas, barley, rye and wheat, of which the first two are constant crops, and the others best just after the ground is cleared. The season is not long enough for corn. At present the growth of timber is most noticed, but hereafter, when the forests have sunk down and faded away, then the farmer, with industry and skill, may reap a rich reward.

There are several ways of access to this region. You can go from Saratoga Springs to Glens Falls, to Lake George, thence some thirty miles over Spruce Mountain to Chester and Schroon Lake; then through the woods some thirty miles to Long Lake, or the Adirondack Iron Works, then twenty miles of forest to Mount Marcy.

Or you can follow up Saranac river from Plattsburg to the Saranac Lakes, then cross over a short distance to the Raquette river, then up the Raquette

river to Long Lake. Or you can start from Lowville, Lewis County, from which place there is a road or a place for one, direct to Raquette Lake, a distance of nearly sixty miles in a north-easterly direction, passing through Herkimer County, near Lake No. 4. There is a route on the southern side by way of New Amsterdam and Lake Pleasant.

There is another route still and probably the best one. Starting from Boonville, Oneida county, or Port-Leyden, Lewis county, going north-easterly across Moose river, to Brown's Tract, some 35 miles; then following up a chain of lakes, eight in number, connected together, forming a boat communication nearly all the way. From Eighth Lake, you must carry your boat about two miles and then strike the Raquette waters.

John Brown's Tract has something of a history connected with it. More than fifty years ago, John Brown, Governor of Rhode Island, bought 200,000 acres of wild land in Herkimer and Hamilton Counties, near the waters of Moose river, for the purpose of opening and carrying on the iron business. A colony was sent on, 3,000 acres cleared up, veins of iron ore found and opened, a forge built. But the mines were not as productive as expected, soil cold,—much money was expended without a return or prospect of one. The overseer, sent on by Gov. Brown, killed himself, the settlers became discouraged, and the place was abandoned. At present, one family by name of Arnold live there, occupying some 2,000 acres, run over with foot shrubs and wild grasses. The place looks desolate, and has not the freshness of nature or the culture of man to enliven it. The ruined forge, the broken trees and the eddying wind tell of loneliness.

Yet there is much in this region to draw hitherward the pleasure-loving, many inducements for the money-loving. We can retire from the busy world, away from its noise and tumult, its cares and perplexities. We can here invigorate the body with healthful and pleasant exercise, with the pure air and the fresh breeze. We can charm the imagination with beautiful scenery, the calm lake, the towering mountain, the gorgeous sunset, the wave tops of the forest ocean. We can feast the intellect on the sublimity of the heights and depths, on the displays of the mighty power of nature, on the works of an artist, that has just put the finishing on and spread over them the canopy of heaven. But in a few years,

the railroad with its iron web will bind the free forest, the lakes will lose their solitude, the deer and moose will go to a safer resort, the eagle and the raven leave their accustomed haunts, and men with

axe and spade will work out a revolution. Health, pleasure and improvement are its products now; so will they make stronger for active life the hand, the heart and mind.

PISCATOR.-Confound all almanacs! say I. I never knew one which told the truth. -This "Old Farmer's," now predicts fine weather during this entire week, and says the sun rose to-day at 4h. 34m., and that there is a full moon, while on each of the three days that my flies have been nesting here, I have deprived myself of natural rest at most injurious early hours, and not had a glimpse of sunshine or of anything but rain, rain, rain, and of the disgusting cockneys, who come up here in their holiday dresses

A. N. JR.-It seems you have found plenty of moonshine, then.

PISCATOR.-Moonshine? I don't believe either sun or moon ever show themselves here; and what the use of almanacs can be to these people, where one day is just like another, I can't conceive.

A. N. JR.-I will tell you. My dear fellow-take another cigar and be quiet —Almanacs, under such circumstances, are particularly intended for the moral discipline of fidgetty Piscators, like yourself, who are caught in a country inn during a long rainstorm. It is to bring them to that ultimate state of human wisdom and patience attained by those eminent star-gazers, King Solomon and Cornelius Agrippa, when they wrote their treatises, "De Incertitudine et Vanitate Omnium Scientiarum et Artium."

But, seriously, the Almanac is worthy of your great respect. The antiquity of its family is higher than that of the Dictionary or Spelling-book. It is the representative of the old oracles; the descendant of many Pagan creeds and magic rites; preserving in the names of the days the memory of our ancient Saxon gods, in the titles of the months, the

Roman mythology, and in the astronomical signs and figures, Chaldean and Egyptian lore.

It is a treasury of vulgar superstitions and popular errors, no less than of progressive science and useful arts: and the imagination is refreshed in this Age of Iron by the harmless nourishment it continues to supply to the yearnings of human nature for something supernatural and above reason, and by its encouragement of those customs and feelings of heathenish origin which daily appear in our ceremonies and language.

It has long been acknowledged as part of the law of the land, of which the Courts will take judicial notice.

PISCATOR.-Certainly. Here is a precedent. There was, not long ago, an old magistrate in my county who used to administer the Catholic oath to Irishmen upon an ancient American Almanac which had been upon his desk till it had grown dingy enough to pass for a school Testament. The Bar supposed this accounted for the exuberant imagination manifested in the testimony of those witnesses, and for the alacrity with which they established dates, accommodated themselves to times, and accounted for Occurences. And you cannot have forgotten the Knickerbocker ballad:

"It was Sam Jones, the fisherman,
Was bound for Sandy Hook,
But first, upon his Almanac

A solemn oath he took:

Oh! grant, immortal Queen of Heaven,'
Was still this prayer of Sam's,
That I may have good luck to-night,
And catch a load of clams.""

A. N. JR.-Well! I maintain that the Almanac ranks next to the Bible-next

to the Bible, it is the book most universally distributed and most frequently read. In the cottage or the palace, in the scholar's library, the merchant's counting-room, the lady's boudoir, the village tavern, the ship at sea, the hunter's camp, or even the jail, you will find the almanac first of all books and all conveniences. It has, indeed, many varieties; the learned Dr. Rees says they may be classified as "public or private, perfect and imperfect, heathen and Christian, book-almanacs and sheet-almanacs." Of these varieties, many are specially adapted to different classes of mankind; there are the "American" and "British" Almanacs for the men of facts; the Nautical Almanacs for navigators and astronomers; the "Connaissance des Tems," for the accurate French savants; the "Almanack de Gorta," for flunkeys and genealogists; the "Almanack des Lorettes," for our young medical friends at Paris; Punch's Almanac and Pocketbook for the railway traveller, and the "Almanack des Gourmands" for you and me; to say nothing of sectarian, and comic, and pictorial almanacs, of those intended for the advertisement of quack medicines or the great number of small fry of no use after their year, or out of their own province; but none of these are to be compared in estimation to the venerable type of the family, the oldfashioned, cheap, popular almanac, full of statistics, proverbs, recipes and riddles, stuffed with moral and agricultural advice, curiously intermixed, with its close calendar columns of " aspects, holydays, courts, weather," &c., down which meander the prophecies of storms, winds and clear skies, with renaissance woodcuts of the zodiacal emblems for the months, and prefaced by the terrible picture of the "man i' the almanack," tied down like Gulliver by small lines running from "arms," "bowels," "reins," to the queer signs of Gemini, Virgo, Libra, which serve as stakes.

This is the only kind of almanac serviceable to everybody, and which everybody will admit to be a pleasant and useful book. Even when it has become only a "last year's almanac," that proverbial expression will not bring it into contempt. It usually grows rich in manuscript notes; and those of its sort preserved among descendants of clergymen and "squires" of the two generations next after the revolution are now invaluable repositories of genealogy, of family, town and parish history, and of such

meteorological details as might perhaps afford means of predicting the weather in future years exactly enough to suit. even you.

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PISCATOR.-The Kennebunk Almanac was the wisest and most reliable one ever published. Instead of the usual prophecies, that had, interlined along its pages, the sentences "About-this-time,-expect-much-weather;" and for the next month, Expect much - weatherabout-this-time." Old Crawford, on the other side of these mountains, had the right of it, when he used to answer the continual questions addressed to him about the morrow's weather, by saying "that was none of his business, and he didn't inquire into it." And old parson B-, was not very wicked when he told his congregation who requested him to offer up prayers, for a cessation of rain, that it was of no use to pray for fair weather until the wind should shift round from north-east."

Depend upon it, sensible men of all ages have ridiculed such rubbish as these superstitious books contain. Rabelais did so, bravely and effectually, in the "Pantagruelian Prognostications" which excel those of Father Miller himself. In Hudibras that ridicule is the main purpose of the description of the conjurer who

"with the moon was more familiar,
Than e'er was almanac well-willer;
Her secrets understood so clear,
That some believed he had been there;
Knew when she was in fittest mood
For cutting corns, or letting blood;
Whether the wane be, or increase,
Best to set garlic, or sow peas;
He made an instrument to show
If the moon shine at full or no;
That would, as soon as e'er she shone, straight
Whether 't were day or night demonstrate;
Tell what her d'ameter to an inch is,
And prove that she's not made of green cheese.'

Bayle's first considerable publication, "Miscellaneous Reflections occasioned by the comet which appeared in 1680," in which he seems to doubt "whether people were not more credulous in his age than in the days of Paganism," most thoroughly and sensibly exposes those popular follies by which you seem to be so much delighted; and never did Dean Swift's caustic satire have a sharper edge or plainer mark than those formidable almanac predictions which raised the general panic he derided in his "Annus Mirabilis; or the wonderful effects of the approaching Conjunction of the Planets

JUPITER, MARS, and SATURN. By Mart. Scriblerus."

He gravely commences-"I suppose everybody is sufficiently apprised of, and duly prepared for, the famous conjunction to be celebrated the 29th of this instant December, 1722, foretold by all the sages of antiquity under the name of the " Annus Mirabilis," or the metamorphostical conjunction; a word which denotes the mutual transformation of sexes (the effect of that configuration of the celestial bodies), the human males being to be turned into females, and the human females into males."

A. N. JR.-Enough of that, good Piscator. Those men were all scoffers like yourself, and could not enjoy or appreciate truth latent in any fiction but their

own.

Hear what the more tolerant sceptic, Montaigne, says: “J'en veoy qui estudient et glosent leurs almanacs, et nous en alleguent l'auctorité aux choses qui se passent. A tant dire, il fault qu'ils dient et la verité et le mensonge; (comme dict Cicero) quis est enim qui, totum diem jaculans, non aliquando, collineet.'" And the great John Selden, in his Table Talk, declares, regarding such matters, that "Dreams and prophecies do thus much good; they make a man go on with boldness and courage, upon a Danger or a Mistress; if he obtains, he attributes much to them; if he miscarries, he thinks no more of them, or is no more thought of himself." Even false hypotheses, like the word-mill at Laputa, eliminate important truths, and produce a useful energy and direction of action.

Fallacious as their science may be, there is much edification and amusement in those literary portions of the almanac, which to you may seem only stuffed in at the close of the book, or in the side columns, to enlarge it to a more imposing size. They have a mixed and humble resemblance to the deep flow of theorizing and curious observation, currente calamo, of Lord Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne.

Plain and pithy, though ostentatious in striving to keep up a stilted dignity to correspond with that of the mathematical learning they accompany, these compositions, with much that is of antique origin, indicate perhaps more clearly than any others, the spirit of the age in which they are published, and the mental and religious culture of the class to whom they were addressed.

It is the same with the cheap, popular

not remember the almanac we studied, to while away a rainy evening, in the "Hotel des Cerfs" of the quaint, mediaeval town of Romont, in Switzerland, and from which, you admitted, we learned in two hours more of the customs in that conservative canton Freiburg, than by a month's reading from Murray's Encyclopædia hand-book.

PISCATOR.-Perfectly. It contained just such absurd predictions as this one; and the same sort of transparent enigmas, country Joe Miller jokes, patriotic fables, and recipes for curing bacon and chilblains; with a long list of fast-days and feast-days, and all kinds of fairs and markets equivalent to the "Old Farmer's" programme of religious conferences, court-sessions, and college commencements. Some of its "wise sayings" were really wise, however. The old Spanish proverb, "when it is fair weather take your cloak; any fool would take his in a storm," was translated politely

"Quand il fait beau Prends ton manteau; Et lorsq' il pleut, Prends-le si tu veux."

That is particularly suited to a mountainous country.

A. N. JR.-There was another proverb in that almanac which you should also recollect" Après la pluie vient le beau temps."

PISCATOR.-I do recall, with a deep sense of its truth, this, which I found in an Irish Almanac at the Castle-Blayney Fair,

"If the first of July be rainy weather

'T will rain more or less for forty days together."

A. N. JR.-Ah! that old monkish legend about St. Swithin's day-that the heavens, incensed at his martyrdom, poured down a new flood of forty days' duration, and would ever continue thus to commemorate that unfortunate anniversary-is quite out of place in our Protestant country; to say nothing of its having been spoiled by the change of the calendar in 1752, according to Horace Walpole, who said it was not likely St. Swithin or any other Saint would accommodate himself to acts of parliament.

That change in the calendar made sad work with the Saints' days. Till then, in England, it was considered eminently Protestant, that is, a mark of zeal for the church of England, says the learned au

thor of "the Illustrated Anglican Calendar," that every day should be appropriated to its Saint, and that without this, an almanac was nought. This custom, which is now considered a peculiarity of the Romish Church, was doubtless convenient for the recollection of dates, every day of the year having its name and character borne in mind as well as the days of the week; and perhaps the sudden discontinuance of its commemorative character added some religious fervor to the animosity of the common people upon the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, exhibited in the memorable civil tumults on that occasion, and the general outcry of the mob, as in Hogarth's picture, "Give us back our eleven days!"

The Saints'-days retained in the English Calendar were merely a conveniently distributed selection from those dedicated to the memory of our Lord, or to the martyrs most distinguished in the Gospels, the founders of Christianity in England, and the most eminent early Fathers; as well as those from which leases and terms of courts had been dated, since the time of King Alfred.

In our matter-of-fact and irreverent country, this small list is much diminished; and the places of many timehonored social festivals and religious anniversaries are poorly supplied in our calendars by notes of the birth-days of the saints of this worldly generation: Napoleon Bonaparte, Queen Victoria, General Jackson, and the successful inventors of machinery.

PISCATOR.-But we have not neglected to conform to the almanac-literature of the old world by the least disuse of its rhyming weather proverbs, although some of them are singularly unsuited to our climate: "Coelum non animum mutant," &c. They fix themselves strangely in the mind, however. how many we can repeat:

Let us see

"If the grass grow in Janiveer, It grows the worse for 't all the year."

A. N., JR.

"If Candlemass-day be fair and bright, Winter will take another flight:

If Candlemass-day bring clouds and rain, Winter is gone, and will not come again."

PISCATOR.

"March winds and May sun

Make clothes white and maids dun."

A. N., JR.

"So many mists in March you see, So many frosts in May will be."

A. N., JR.-Here is that of which your master, gentle old Izaak Walton, quoted only the last two lines, because he would not admit any other to be the best weather than that which brought the best fishing:

"When the wind is in the west,
The weather is at the best;
When the wind is in the east,

It is good for neither man nor beast;
When the wind is in the south,

It blows the bait into the fishes' mouth."

PISCATOR.-Worthy Izaak knew better than to pin his faith to a musty proverb. That might be well enough if all the adages of almanac-makers were prudent as those of Poor Richard. I doubt if Dr. Franklin gained a wider or higher reputation for sagacity with the mass of his countrymen by all his political or scientific attainments, than from those well-remembered axioms of frugality, which, since collected under the just title of "the Way to Wealth," first established the popularity of Poor Richard's Alma