Moosehead Lake is a little bigger than the Lago di Guarda, and
therefore, according to our American standard, rather more important. It
is not very grand, not very picturesque, but considerably better than
no lake,--a meritorious mean; not pretty and shadowy, like a thousand
lakelets all over the land, nor tame, broad, and sham-oceanic, like the
tanks of Niagara. On the west, near its southern end, is a well-intended
blackness and roughness called Squaw Mountain. The rest on that side is
undistinguished pine woods.

Mount Kinneo is midway up the lake, on the east. It is the show-piece of
the region,--the best they can do for a precipice, and really admirably
done. Kinneo is a solid mass of purple flint rising seven hundred feet
upright from the water. By the side of this block could some Archimedes
appear, armed with a suitable "_pou stô_" and a mallet heavy enough,
he might strike fire to the world. Since percussion-guns and friction
cigar-lighters came in, flint has somewhat lost its value; and Kinneo
is of no practical use at present. We cannot allow inutilities in this
world. Where is the Archimedes? He could make a handsome thing of it by
flashing us off with a spark into a new system of things.

Below this dangerous cliff on the lake-bank is the Kinneo House, where
fishermen and sportsmen may dwell, and kill or catch, as skill or
fortune favors. The historical success of all catchers and killers is
well balanced, since men who cannot master facts are always men of
imagination, and it is as easy for them to invent as for the other class
to do. Boston men haunt Kinneo. For a hero who has not skill enough or
imagination enough to kill a moose stands rather in Nowhere with Boston
fashion. The tameness of that pleasant little capital makes its belles
ardent for tales of wild adventure. New-York women are less exacting; a