LONG LAKE COLONY-A LOON-FORKED LAKE.

FORKED LAKE, August.

DEAR H

:

TAKING Mitchell along with me, we embarked on Monday in his birch bark canoe for Forked and Raquette Lakes. Paddling leisurely up Long Lake, I was struck with the desolate appearance of the settlement. Scarcely an improvement has been made since I was last here, while some clearings are left to go back to their original wildness. Disappointed purchasers, lured in by extravagant statements, have given up in despondency and left-the best people are all going away, and in a short time there will be nobody left but hunters. This wilderness will be encroached upon in time, though it will require years to give us so crowded a population as to force settlements into this desolate interior of the State.

But our light canoes soon left the last clearing; and curving round the shore, we shot into Raquette River, and entered the bosom of the forest. As we left the lake, I saw a northern diver some distance up the inlet, evidently anxious to get out once more into open space. These birds (about the size of a goose,) you know, cannot rise from the water except by a long effort, and against a strong damp wind; and depend for safety entirely on diving, and swimming. At the approach of danger, they go under like a duck, and when you next see them, they are perhaps sixty rods distant, and beyond the reach of your bullet. If cornered in a small pond, they will sit and watch your motions with a keenness and certainty that is wonderful, and dodge the flash of a percussion-lock gun all day long. The moment they see the blaze from the muzzle they dive, and the bullet, if well aimed, will strike exactly where they sat. I have shot at them again and again, with a dead rest, and those watching, would see the ball each time, strike in the hollow made by the wake of the water above the creature's back. There is no killing them except by firing at them when they are not expecting it, and then their head and neck are the only

vulnerable points. They sit so deep in the water, and the quills on their backs are so hard and compact that a ball seems to make no impression on them. At least, I have never seen one killed by being shot through the body. Such are the means of self-preservation possessed by this curious bird, whose wild, shrill, and lonely cry, on the lake at midnight, is one of the most melancholy sounds I ever heard in the forest.

This diver, of which I was just now speaking, I wished very much to kill, in order to carry his skin to New York with me; and so, after firing at him in vain, I asked Mitchell if we could not both of us together manage to take him. He told me to land him where the channel was narrow that entered Long Lake, and paddle along towards where the fellow was sitting, and drive him out. As I approached the bird, he dived. Knowing that he would make straight for the lake, I watched the whole line of his progress with the utmost care: but though my range took in nearly a third of a mile, I never saw him again. After a while I heard the crack of a rifle around the bend of the shore; and hastening thither, I found Mitchell loading his gun. He said the rascal just raised

his head above water for a single second, opposite where he stood, and he of course missed him. The frightened bird did not appear again till it rose far out in the lake.

I mention this circumstance merely to show the habits of this, to me, most singular bird of our northern waters. I forgot to say that although it cannot rise from the water except with great difficulty, and never attempts it to escape danger, neither can it walk on the shore. Diving is about the only gift it possesses, which it uses, I must say, with great ability and success.

Paddling up Raquette river, we at length came to Buttermilk Falls, around which we were compelled to carry our canoes. So in another place we were compelled to carry them two miles, around rapids, through the woods. Nothing can be more comical than to stand and see a party thus passing through the forest. First a yoke is placed across the guide's neck, on which the boat is balanced bottom side up, covering the poor fellow down to the shoulders, and sticking out fore and aft over the biped below in such a way as to make him appear half human, halt-supernatural, or, at least, entirely un-natural. But it was