of a hundred thousand pounds; by degrees
rumour grew into certainty, confirmed by the
verdict of a court of law. It then appeared that
this great, haughty, historically named gentleman
had forged on all his friends in every shape; in
cheques, for which at the last moment he
obtained cash; in acceptances, by which, with a
real income of less than a thousand a year, he
had for many years paid thirty thousand a year
in interest at sixty per cent. This is one great
example of turf education; but innumerable
smaller instances occur; Manchester, Liverpool,
Sheffield, supply their full quota to the general
ruin. Every year, instances of larceny, instances
of forgery. As for forgery, it is so common a
sequence of unsuccessful turf speculation, that
the young gentleman who takes to the betting-
ring as an easy and genteel mode of increasing
his income, may make pretty sure of shaking
hands with a gentleman who has forged, or is
about to forge. It is an old rule with the sixty
per cent. discounter, that from a man of respectable
connexions a forged acceptance is a better
security than a genuine bill.

SHOOTING IN THE ADIRONDACK.

APOLLOS SMITH was our guide on my first
tramp among the Adirondack Mountains in New
York. He is a famous fellow, Pollos, or Paul,
as he is called. A tall athletic Yankee, with
no superfluous flesh about him, raw-boned,
with a good-natured twinkle in his blue eye,
brimful of genuine Yankee humour; he has no
bad habits, and is, withal, the best rifle-shot,
paddler, and compounder of forest stews in the
whole region. Let me tell his last exploit.
In Yankee parlance, he was "courting a gal,"
and in a strait to get married, so he resolved to
build him an hotel, and settle. He knew a little
lake, or rather pond, on the middle branch of
the St. Regis River suited to his purpose. There
was a log shanty on it, with two springs close
by; it was in a part of the forest little hunted,
and abounding in deer and trout, and it
communicated directly with the great St. Regis Lake,
and other ponds. The winter in those elevated
regions is almost Arctic. In the month of
January, 1859, he plunged into the forest with
two lumbermen, took possession of the shanty,
and began his clearing. The snow was five or
six feet deep, and the cold intense. They felled
the gigantic trees, pines, hemlocks, firs, and
cedars, cut out beams, split shingles, and laid
the foundation of a large house on the bank of
the lake. The boards were sawn at a mill down
the river. They cut out a road through the
wilderness to the nearest point of a neglected
military road, which traverses the St. Regis
country from Lake Champlain to the St.Lawrence.
During this time, Smith, as he told me,
went a courting every Sunday, a trifle of thirty
miles, sometimes on snow-shoes. He also went
to New York and selected his furniture, besides
visiting Boston. The house, a large frame
building, was completed and furnished, and Paul
was married and settled, before June.

It was for this new establishment, and accordng
to directions received from Smith, that our
little party of three left Boston in August.
By rail to Burlington, Vermont, eleven hours;
across Lake Champlain to Port Kent, New
York, and by stage to Keesville, on the Au
Sable River, before night. I could give but
a meagre description of our fifty-mile ride in
an Adirondack waggon on the following day,
for words feebly express what one feels in passing
through sublime mountain scenery.

I should like to describe an Adirondack
village, made up of some half-dozen log-
houses of the rudest description, with sometimes
an unpainted frame-house, with the sign
"Post-office" on it. The only appearance of
thrift is seen at the smithy; no hotel, no "meeting-
house;" a school-house, falling to decay;
"Cash Store," in drunken letters over some
doorway; a lazy deer-hound or two; some
ragged, timid, tow-headed children playing in
the road; a frouzy, gipsy-looking face peering
through a window; a dense forest hemming
in the whole. Sometimes we passed a pretty
group of plastered cottages, with white window-
curtains, and women in snowy caps, belonging
to French Canadians. Anon, one of
Gerrit Smith's black settlements, the houses
more dilapidated than the rest, with perhaps a
laughing black boy, with a rim of old hat upon
his woolly head, dancing in the doorway. We
saw one village utterly deserted; a freshet
swept away its mill several years ago, and
the inhabitants abandoned it. It was called
New Sweden. Then, we met a long train of
waggons, drawn by mules, coming from the iron
villages, the chief of which is Au Sable Forks.
The people in these wilds, excepting the miners
and charcoal-burners, live chiefly by logging in
the winter and spring, and by hunting and farming
in the fall and summer. Every man and boy
carries a rifle. At Franklin Falls, on the River
Saranac, we met a man who had been to drive
his cow from pasture. I asked him if he always
carried his rifle? He said that a few days before
he had neglected to take it, as usual, and had
met a fine buck standing in the path, which
seemed to dispute his right of way. Next day
he took his gun, and there was the buck again.
He fired, and missed him; but the deer, instead
of bounding away, stood stamping and "whistling"
—i.e. snorting—until he reloaded his rifle
and shot him.

We arrived at Smith's, long after sundown,
and had a hearty supper of venison and trout;
made arrangements for starting on the morrow,
and then to bed.

In the morning we found that Smith had,
in Emerson's phrase, "builded better than he
knew." Right opposite, across the lake, arose
the noble St. Regis range, purple with the
tints of morning and flecked with white mist.
In front of the house stood a tall weird pine,
which seemed to be whispering something to the
lake as it leaned towards its rippled surface.
On the left was a pretty rocky island to which
we paddled for our morning bath. Some black