Existing comment:
Grant's Last Trip to the Eastern Outlook:
On July 20, 1886, three days before his death, General Grant, unable to speak, passed a note to his doctor requesting to be taken to the Eastern Outlook. Because of his weakened state, Grant was carried there in his bath chair by his son, Colonel Fred Grant; his valet, Harrison Tyrell; and Dr. John Douglas.
"What do you think of my taking the bath wagon and going down to overlook the south rim?"
"... old photographs show the General seated in small rustic building on the edge of the Mountain. This building has given place to the monument."
-- Excerpt from "The Passing of the Pine," by J.F. O'Neill, in the Mount McGregor Optimist, January 1923.
"After the last page of his book was finished, General Grant determined to make the most of his now rapidly failing strength, in visiting, before he should die, the Easter Outlook of the mountain, that he might gaze upon the wondrous scene there spread before him..."
-- Excerpt from The Historic Muse of Mount McGregor, One of the Adirondacks Near Saratoga, by Nathaniel B. Sylvester, 1886.
"There is a spot here known as the Eastern Lookout, which few visitors fail to see and which is a delight to all. It commands a broad sweep of valley, with the Green Mountains banking the eastern horizon, the Adirondacks looming up in the north, and the outlines of the Catskills traced against the southern sky. One may rest there in rustic chairs under a pavilion ingeniously built of tree limbs and branches yet in the bark, and look out upon a scene that has no equal for pastoral repose in this region."
-- New York Times, July 21, 1885. |