nd.

After nightfall we went out and walked up and down the grass-grown
streets. It was a curious and melancholy spectacle. The remoteness and
surrounding wildness rendered the scene doubly impressive. And the
next day and the next the place was an object of wonder. There were
about thirty buildings in all, most of them small frame houses with a
door and two windows opening into a small yard in front and a garden
in the rear, such as are usually occupied by the laborers in a country
manufacturing district. There was one large two-story boarding-house,
a schoolhouse with cupola and a bell in it, and numerous sheds and
forges, and a saw-mill. In front of the saw-mill, and ready to be
rolled to their place on the carriage, lay a large pile of pine logs,
so decayed that one could run his walking-stick through them. Near by,
a building filled with charcoal was bursting open and the coal going
to waste on the ground. The smelting works were also much crumbled by
time. The schoolhouse was still used. Every day one of the daughters
assembles her smaller brothers and sisters there and school keeps. The
district library contained nearly one hundred readable books which
were well thumbed.

The absence of society had made the family all good readers. We
brought them an illustrated newspaper, which was awaiting them in the
post-office at the Lower Works. It was read and reread with great
eagerness by every member of the household.

The iron ore cropped out on every hand. There was apparently
mountains of it; one could see it in the stones along the road. But
the difficulties met with in separating the iron from its alloys,
together with the expense of transportation and the failure of certain
railroad schemes, caused the works to be abandoned. No doubt the time
is not distant when these obstacles will be overcome and this region
reopened.

At present it is an admirable place to go to. There is fishing and
hunting and boating and mountain-climbing within easy reach, and a
good roof over your head at night, which is no small matter. One is
often disqualified for enjoying the woods after he gets there by the
loss of sleep and of proper food taken at seasonable times. This point
attended to, one is in the humor for any enterprise.

About half a mile northeast of the village is Lake Henderson, a very
irregular and picturesque sheet of water surrounded by dark evergreen
forests, and abutted by two or three bold promontories with m