TWO HOTELS AT ALEXANDRIA BAY

The present surroundings at Alexandria Bay are very picturesque and attractive. Let us suppose some traveler from Europe who had seen all lands but our own, to be on one of the many steamers that land at Alexandria Bay, and as the boat glides into the swift and narrow channel above the town, and her bow is turned so as to bring into sudden view the beautiful hotels and picturesque cottages, each perched on its pedestal of primeval rock, what would be his surprise and awakening interest. Before him would be the grand river, the beautiful islands, the buildings which adorn what nature has made so grand and inviting. Suppose yet further that on the very evening of his arrival there would occur one of those not infrequent river carnivals, when all the receding shore, the hundreds of gaily-adorned boats, the moving throng of spectators would be bathed in the soft light thrown from a thousand flaming lanterns, and then this whole scene of beauty should be enlivened by thrilling music under a starlit sky, would not our much traveled visitor be constrained to cry out, "Why this is even beyond Venice!"

He would be only one of many visitors at Alexandria Bay and the Thousand Islands who cannot understand how so much could have been accomplished in a quarter of a century. Such observers should, however, remember that man has made but few improvements, compared with the work of the Almighty Builder, whose admirable handiwork was known and appreciated many years ago by some of the prominent men in the country. Indeed, if a list had been kept of the names of visitors, it would have embraced nearly all of the prominent statesmen during the administrations of Jackson, Van Buren, Polk, and Buchanan.

This popular summer resort would have been brought much sooner inot public notice but for the want of more extended hotel accomodations. Charles Crossmon began a hotel there early in 1848, and he proved a most acceptable and popular landlord, enlarging his modest building each year, until the present Crossmon House is one of the finest summer hotels in the country.

The time soon came, however, when one hotel could not accommodate all the people, and in 1873, Col. O.G. Staples, now proprietor of "Willard's", Washington, D.C., completed the Thousand Island House, and these two leading hotels have been very successful.

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Nan Dixon

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