ime, slower still.
Railroads crossing Ohio were required to run on Columbus time. When you
were selecting a steamer from the thirty placards on the bulletin board
at the Fair Point Post office, in order to meet an Erie train at
Lakewood, unless you noticed the time-standard, you might find at the
pier that your steamer had gone forty minutes before, or on arriving at
Lakewood learn that your boat was running on Cincinnati time, and you
were three quarters of an hour late for the train, for even on the Erie
of those days, trains were not _always_ an hour behind time.

Nor was this variety of "time, times, and half-time" all the drawbacks.
When news came that an excursion train was due from Buffalo, every
steamboat on the lake would ignore its time-table and the needs of the
travelers; and all would be bunched at the Mayville dock and around it
to catch the passengers. Or it might be a similar but more tangled
crowd of boats in the Outlet at Jamestown to meet a special train from
Pittsburgh. Haven't I seen a bishop on the Fair Point pier, who _must_
get the train at Lakewood to meet his conference in Colorado, scanning
the landscape with not a boat in sight, all piled up three miles away?

[Illustration: Palestine Park, Looking North

Dead Sea in foreground: Mount Hermon in distance]

[Illustration: Tent-Life in 1875

J. L. Hurlbut, J. A. Worden, Frank Beard, J. L. Hughes]

Nor were the arrangements for freight and baggage in those early years
any more systematic than those for transportation. Although Chautauqua
Lake is on the direct line of travel east and west, between New York and
Chicago, and north and south between Buffalo and Pittsburgh, Fair Point,
the seat of the Assembly, was not a railroad station. Luggage could be
checked only to Jamestown, Lakewood, or Mayville, and thence must be
sent by boat. Its destination might be indicated by a tag or a chalk
mark, or it might remain unmarked. Imagine a steamer deck piled high
with trunks, valises, bundles of blankets, furniture, tent equipment,
and things miscellaneous, stopping at a dozen points along the lake to
have its cargo assorted and put ashore--is it strange that some baggage
was left at the wrong place, and its owner wandered around looking
vainly for his property? One man remarked that the only way to be sure
of your trunk was to sit on it; but what if your trunk was on the top
or at the bottom of a pile ten feet high? Considering all the
difficulties