With what words shall I be able to make you see what we saw? The air was pure and clear as a newly-cut diamond, white and colorless as mountain air always is, -- a perfect lens, through which, with unimpeded eye, we saw the marvelous transfiguration from day to night go on. Five thousand feet beneath us Lake Placid slept, verifying its name. In the south, a hundred mountain peaks were ablaze with the peculiar red sunset light. For a hundred miles the wilderness stretched away, -- a deep green sea, across whose surface the sun was casting great fields of crimson. Amid the darker portions eighty patches of gold flashed, representing as many lakes. Eastward, the valley of Champlain lay in deep shadow. To the north, bounding the vision like a thread of silver, gleamed the St. Lawrence. In the valley of the south lay the martyred dust of him who died on a Virginia gallows, that American manhood and American liberty might not perish. The closing moment had now come. The heavens to the west were swathed in the richest tints of scarlet and orange. A thousand colors lay on forest and lake. The mountain summits flared. The sun, like a globe of liquid fire, quivering in the intensity of its heat, stood as if balancing on the western pines. Down into them it burnt its way. Passing for a moment, and only a moment, it poured its warm benediction upon the forest, bade a crimson farewell to each mountain top, kissed the clouds around its couch, quivered, and dropped from sight! And there in the crisp air we thus stood, and gazed in silence westward, until the shadows deepened along the sky; the fog crept in and filled once more the valley at our feet; and the wilderness which had been to me and mine a nurse and home, and which we feared we should never see or enter together again, lay wrapped in silence and in gloom.
W.H.H. Murray
(Quoted in "Favorite Flies and Their Histories" by Mary Orvis Marbury, p. 159)
In these fishing jaunts, when mountains are clothed in their most voluptuous dress, when the forest is redolent with the odor of swooning flowers, and the river gleams with a thousand silver lights, while everywhere are rivulets that drain what must be the springs of eternal youth, one may drink deep of an elixir of life more potent than that of Septimius Felton. In this sense, our last days on the Doherty was idyllic and prolific of thrilling scenes, while the victories we dramatically rehearsed about the camp-fire at Gum-Boot Bar seemed herioc; and when we laid down at night, bathed in the amorous breath of the pines, we were fretted only by the "thrust" of a great trout striking in the pool below, and were lulled to rest by the witching song the siren of the river sings; and a crescent burning brightly in the eastern sky threw enchantment over all.
M. O. Lownsdale
(Quoted in "Favorite Flies and Their Histories" p.505)