In the face of legal documents, common speech, and maps, we may rightfully call it Scarron ; for the antiquity and respectability of an error arc not valid excuses for perpetuating it.
From Root's we rode down the valley to the pleasant little village on the western shore of Scarron Lake. We turned aside to visit the beautiful Paradox Lake, nestled among wooded hills a short distance from the river. It is separated from Scarron Lake by a low alluvial drift, and is so nearly
on a level with the river into which it empties, that when torrents from tlie hills swell the waters of that stream, a current flows back into Paradox Lake, making its outlet an Met for the time. Prom this circumstance it received its name. We rode far up its high southern shore to enjoy many fine views of the lake and its surroundings, and returning, lunched in the shadows of trees at a rustic bridge that spans its outlet a few rods below the lake.
Scarron Lake is a beautiful sheet of water, ten miles in length, and about a mile in average width. It is ninety miles north of Albany, and lies partly in Essex and partly in "Warren County. Its aspect is interest-
THE HUDSON.
ing from every point of view. The gentle slopes on its western shore are well cultivated and thickly inhabited, the result of sixty years' settlement, but on its eastern shore are precipitous and rugged hills, which extend in wild and picturesque succession to Lake Champlain, fifteen or twenty miles distant. In the bosom of these hills, and several hundred feet above the Scarron, lies Lake Pharaoh, a body of cold water surrounded by dark mountains, and near it is a large cluster of ponds, all of Avhich find a receiving reservoir in Scarron Lake, and make its outlet a large stream.