up commenced, as first the champagne basket, then
packages, bundles, and newspapers, were left at various dwellings along
the roadside. One novelty especially striking was the wayside post
office, consisting of a box on a pole, intended to contain the daily
newspaper therein thrust to await the coming of the owners.

Of course the driver was plied with numerous questions regarding the
thus far nameless lake. He had been up the Shawangunk mountain fishing,
but that was years before; there was a lake, but he had never heard any
name given to it; he had understood a house had been built since his
last visit; but he did not know if it was intended to accommodate
visitors during the night. Of one thing, however, he was quite certain,
and that was, the impossibility of finding a horse in New Paltz to take
the ladies up that evening. The inns had none to let; there were no
livery stables, and his own pair were too greatly fatigued by their
twenty-mile drive to venture up so steep an ascent; but he thought a
conveyance might be found for the following morning. The views along the
road were charming; and the sharp, jagged crest known as Paltz Point,
overhung the well-cultivated rolling valley beneath, giving a fair
promise of an extended and characteristic view.

The inn, to which the travellers were driven, proved very neat and
comfortable. It was a new edifice, with an accommodating landlord and
landlady, the latter of which personages seemed quite mystified by the
advent of two lorn ladies in search of an unknown lake. In the entry
hung a new map of Ulster county, on which appeared a lake nestling under
the cliffs of Paltz Point, but still without a name. Paltz Point!--that
must be the very jagged pile of rock visible from the Cornwall hills,
and the lake at its foot more than probably the object of the journey.

The landlord was quite positive as to the existence of a house, but
doubted its capacity in regard to sleeping accommodations; he also
corroborated the testimony of the driver respecting the difficulty of
obtaining a vehicle, every horse being engaged haying. The ladies
announced that, as the distance was only six miles, it could be walked,
in case this difficulty proved insuperable. An individual at the tea
table proposed that the travellers should be taken up some time in the
middle of the night, that the horse might return by six o'clock in the
morning; but this suggestion was unanimously frowned down. The chief