of a name, the mountain clearly asserts its natural authority. It stands
up boldly; and not only its own lake, but at least three others, the
Lower Saranac, Round Lake, and Lonesome Pond, lie at its foot and
acknowledge its lordship. When the cloud is on its brow, they are dark.
When the sunlight strikes it, they smile. Wherever you may go over the
waters of these lakes you shall see Mount Ampersand looking down at you,
and saying quietly, "This is my domain."

I never look at a mountain which asserts itself in this fashion without
desiring to stand on the top of it. If one can reach the summit, one
becomes a sharer in the dominion. The difficulties in the way only add
to the zest of the victory. Every mountain is, rightly considered, an
invitation to climb. And as I was resting for a month one summer at
Bartlett's, Ampersand challenged me daily.

Did you know Bartlett's in its palmy time? It was the homeliest,
quaintest, coziest place in the Adirondacks. Away back in the
ante-bellum days Virgil Bartlett had come into the woods, and built his
house on the bank of the Saranac River, between the Upper Saranac and
Round Lake. It was then the only dwelling within a circle of many miles.
The deer and bear were in the majority. At night one could sometimes
hear the scream of the panther or the howling of wolves. But soon the
wilderness began to wear the traces of a conventional smile. The desert
blossomed a little--if not as the rose, at least as the gilly-flower.
Fields were cleared, gardens planted; half a dozen log cabins were
scattered along the river; and the old house, having grown slowly and
somewhat irregularly for twenty years, came out, just before the time of
which I write, in a modest coat of paint and a broad-brimmed piazza.
But Virgil himself, the creator of the oasis--well known of hunters and
fishermen, dreaded of lazy guides and quarrelsome lumbermen,--"Virge,"