of the ruins of old " Fort Ti," as it is called for the sake of brevity, and through his courtesy, and the kindness of his architect, Mr. Alfred C. Bossom of New York, we have the pleasure of giving in Appendix I an account of this important work of restoration. At the same time we are indebted to Captain Howland Pell for a description of the Germain Redoubt, one of the supporting works of Fort Ticonderoga. (See plates 47-54.)

MONTCALM PARK IN OSWEGO, N. Y.

On March 17, 1913, Hon. Thaddeus C. Sweet of Phoenix introduced in the Assembly a bill to provide for the use of certain lands in the City of Oswego as a public park to be known as Montealm Park." The bill transfers the management and control of the present gardens of the State Normal and Training School in the City of Oswego from that institution to the Fort Oswego Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and provides that they shall be called Montcalm Park.*

THE ADIRONDACK FOREST PRESERVE.

The Death of Paul Smith-A Retrospect.

The death of Mr. Paul Smith, the famous Adirondack woodsman, guide and hotel keeper, during the past year, was an event which reminded the living generation of the comparative shortness of the period in which the Adirondacks have ceased to be a "wilderness."

He was

Mr. Smith died December 15, 1912, aged 87 years. born in Milton, Vt., August 20, 1825. His father, Phelps Smith, was a lumberman, so that Paul was born to the woods. Paul remained on his father's farm until he was eighteen years old, and then for several years had charge of a canal boat of the Merchants' Line, running between Lake Champlain and New York. In 1852, when he was 27 years old, he heard "the call of the wild" from the Adirondacks, and, curious to verify stories which he had heard about that region, he left Burlington, Vt., by boat, for Port Kent, N. Y., and drove forty-five miles to Loon Lake.

* The bill was passed and is chapter 610 of the laws of 1913.

He found fish and game so plentiful in the North Woods that he leased a small hunting cabin at Loon Lake and took his parents there. When his lease expired, he purchased a small piece of land about a mile from the lake and erected the Hunters' Home, his first venture in the hotel business. Meeting with success as a hunter, trapper, guide, and hotel keeper, he decided in 1859, to move to the St. Regis Lake region, and for over half a century he was identified with that locality. Gradually his place became known as "Paul Smith's," and during the past few years was a fashionable resort. As he prospered in his affairs, Mr. Smith gradually bought up the land surrounding his place until he became the owner of a park containing over 25,000 acres. In this tract are ten lakes, a large hotel, several cottages, a casino, and a number of camps known collectively as Paul Smith's. He also had other business relations and was a wealthy man when he died.

It is, however, less to record the biographical details of his career than some of the thoughts which his passing away suggests. The death of a long-lived man is like an anniversary in its power to induce retrospect and comparison; and the death of Paul Smith suggests the rapid subjugation of the Adirondack wild during the period of a single life time.

If Paul Smith had been an Agassiz, an Audubon, a Burroughs, a Muir or a Thoreau, what might he not have given us of the natural history and the poetry of that wonderful region which was still almost in its virgin condition when he entered it! If he had had the pen of Fenimore Cooper, what fascinating tales might he not have woven about the Deerslayers and the Pathfindersthe Natty Bumpos, Big Serpents and Leatherstockings— of that region. But such were not his talents. He remained a woodsman to the end, of the type to be written about, not of the type that writes. It is, therefore, to men like Dr. Ebenezer Emmons, Verplanck Colvin and the Rev. W. H. H. Murray* "Adirondack Murray" as he was called and still later to men like the present State Geologist, Dr. John M. Clarke, that we turn for our exact information and our written inspirations concerning the Adirondacks.

* His book and “Adventures in the Wilderness, or Camp Life in the Adirondacks," appeared in 1868.

Geological Origin of the Adirondacks.

There is something awful and solemn about the geological birth of the Adirondacks. They date from Archaean time, which, according to Newcomb, might have been 10,000,000 years ago, and according to McGee, 6,000,000,000 years ago. They were among the first to lift up their heads above the great primeval flood, and they form part of the record which entitles us to call our continent, geologically, the old World, and not the New.

Toward the close of the first grand division of geologic time, many millions of years ago, the waters which then covered not only the whole of the present State of New York but also most of the globe, were rolled back in all directions from the northern part of our State, and from out of their depths rose the stately summits of the Archaean mountains.

After this first convulsive upheaval there were ages of slow subsidence, until the waves of the limitless sea once again beat over the rocky peaks. As the earth cooled and contracted, once again, amid stupendous convulsions, Mother Earth lifted up her firstborn children above the sea, and there, amid the storms and buffetings of untold ages, these Giants have stood in solemn silence, watching the emergence of the surrounding country, and from their own substance contributing to make the soil from which plant and animal life has derived its sustenance in the years that have followed.

These mountains, the Adirondacks, were at first about 8,000 feet high, and as a mass constituted a great island, washed on every side by the primeval sea. As time went on, the erosion of the mountains by the elements and the upheaval of newer strata combined to lower the altitude of the mountains and to extend the continental borders, until the ocean receded to its present coast line, and left far inland these grim old monarchs of the morning of creation.

The Adirondacks an Island.

But even after the lapse of unmeasured ages, the Adirondacks still retain the rudiments of their original insular character. On

* The Indians called Mounts McIntyre and Wallface "The Stonish Giants."

every side the great Adirondack plateau slopes down into the deep depressions or valleys which form the water courses by which today the mountains can be completely circumnavigated. Starting from Lake Ontario, an Indian, before the advent of the white man, could paddle his canoe down the St. Lawrence to the mouth. of the Richelieu; up the Richelieu, through Lake Champlain and up Wood Creek to within a few miles of the headwaters of a creek flowing into the Hudson at Fort Edward., Lifting his canoe from Wood Creek and making his portage at this famous "Great Carrying Place," he could soon reach the Hudson. Thence he could proceed by water, making carries only to avoid waterfalls, through the Mohawk River to the site of the present City of Rome. There, in a portage of a mile to another Wood Creek, the principal inlet to Oneida Lake, he encountered the only other interruption of water connection in his circuit of the Adirondacks. Once on Wood Creek number two, he could proceed to and through Oneida Lake and River to Lake Ontario at Oswego, and by Lake Ontario to his point of departure. Since the advent of the white man, artificial waterways have been cut through the two short portages, so that now the Adirondacks are once more an island, completely surrounded by water as in the days of their infancy.

Origin of the Name Adirondack.

Before the first paleface had excited the wonder of the aborigines that there was a race of beings with skins so white, and before the echo of the awe-inspiring fire-arm first reverberated in the great northern Wilderness, the red men over-ran this region in the hunt and on the war-path. With native instinct, they followed the lines of least resistance and trod the deeply-worn trails which became the highways of their palefaced successors. On account of the conflicting claims of rival tribes to ownership, the country became the dark and bloody ground" of tribal wars, and, with the exception of the Indian settlements on the outer margins, never became the seat of a settled Indian population.

The parties to the dispute were the Oneidas, Onondagas and Mohawks of the Iroquois, and the Montagnais of the lower St. Lawrence, the latter a fierce people of Algonquin stock. The

Algonquin name for the wilderness was "Couch-sach-ra-ge," but, as if to wed the memory of both contesting parties, it is commonly known by a name of Iroquois origin applied to the Algonquins. The Montagnais, who lived entirely by the chase, were often compelled, during long Canadian winters, to live upon the buds and bark, and sometimes even upon the wood of the trees. Their hereditary enemies, the Mohawks, living upon corn, pumpkins, and other vegetables looked down with scorn upon these first consumers of wood pulp, and called them in contempt "Ad-i-rondaks," which means "tree-eaters." * In the course of time the name came to be transferred from the eaters to the thing eaten, and now, by a singular reversal of etymology, we call the great and beautiful forests themselves, and not the manufacturers of wood-pulp, the Adirondacks.

The Unpenetrated Wilderness.

The rugged Adirondack region the first land of the State, and part of the first land of the continent to lift its head above the great primeval flood has been the last to be conquered by civilization; for while the more genial meadows and uplands elsewhere welcomed the pioneer farmer, the canal builder and later the railroad builder, the Hyrcanian depths of the Adirondacks repelled the settler by its bristling ruggedness. The success with which the Adirondacks had repelled invasion up to the period of the Revolution is indicated by the following inscription written across this region on Governor Pownall's map of 1776:

"This vast tract of land which is the antient Couchsachrage, one of the four beaver hunting countries of the Six Nations, is not yet surveyed."

That was 167 years after Champlain had visited the borders of the Adirondacks on the lake which bears his name, and after Hudson had penetrated as far northward as he could go up the river which rises in the Adirondacks and bears his name. There had been some small settlements on the outer edges of the wilder

* From "doran," a people who eat bark, and "dak," trees, with the French particle "la" prefixed. The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States, by Gannett.