Genre:

Essay, Travelogue

Relevant illustrations:

eng. [8]

Subjects:

Geology, Physical Geography, Nomenclature, Natural Imperialism, Societies, Photography

    Explaining that Ampersand is the name of a mountain, a lake and a stream in the Adirondack region of New York State, reflects 'Which of the three Ampersands has the prior claim to the name I can not tell. Philosophically speaking, the mountain ought to be regarded as the father of the family, because it was undoubtedly there before the others existed. And the lake was probably the next on the ground, because the stream is its child. But man is not strictly just in his nomenclature; and I conjecture that the little river, the last-born of the three, was the first to be called Ampersand, and then gave its name to its parent and grandparent' (217–18). After climbing the mountain, claims that 'it is with mountains, as perhaps with men, a mark of superior dignity to be naturally bald', and although Ampersand 'can not claim this distinction', 'what Nature has denied, human labor has supplied. Under the direction of Mr. Verplanck Colvin, of the Adirondack Survey, several acres of trees were cut away from the summit' (224). Also visits the spot where 'some five-and-twenty years ago, the now almost forgotten Adirondack Club had their shanty', and whose illustrious members included 'Agassiz, of Cambridge' (225). Asks the reader if he is 'a photographer, and ha[s] anything of the amateur's passion for your art', before expressing the 'pleasure' and 'anxiety' felt at the realisation that 'Never before, so far as I knew, had a camera been set up on Ampersand' (226). Concludes that the 'plates of glass on which the sun has traced for me (who can not draw) the outlines of that loveliest landscape' (taken with 'a Blair tourograph [...] as compact and useful as anything that is made') are the 'most valuable chattels' of this sojourn among the Adirondack mountains (226–27).