The valley of the Mohawk and the lake country to the south of it is the old land of the Six Nations, whose League of the Iroquois was, when the first Europeans set foot in America, the most powerful and extensive combination of red men existing north of the Gulf of Mexico. History has not always done justice to these Romans of the New World, but the fact becomes clearer as time goes on that they were the ablest and in many ways the most admirable type of their race. Unlike their neighbors, the Algonquins, whose tribes had nothing to bind them together save certain similarities of dialect, the Iroquois had constitutions and well-considered bonds of union, presenting in the heart of the wilderness the barbaric prototype of a federal republic.

The elastic and prehensile character of this union proved the wisdom and foresight of its founders, and it was upheld, besides, by the bravery and steadfastness of a strong and warlike people. Between 1535 and 1680 the Iroquois overran and conquered the whole of the Middle West; and the white invader, when he cast covetous eyes upon their fertile plains and valleys, found in the “brethren of the long house” foemen worthy of his steel and valor. The contest then begun between white man and red was waged almost without ceasing for upward of a century, and ended only with the Revolution.

During that struggle the Iroquois as a body did not unite with the British, but many individuals joined them as volunteers, especially among the Mohawks; and it was for the loss which these volunteers sustained at the battle of Oriskany that they afterwards avenged themselves by the massacre at Wyoming. After the peace of 1783, the British having made no effort on behalf of their Indian allies, most of the Mohawks took refuge in Canada, while the Oneidas and Cayugas sold their lands and departed westward, leaving behind them in Central New York a thousand mute reminders of their age-long battle with an alien race.

This as introduction to the present chronicle of a cycle journey through the land of the Six Nations, which began at Schoharie, and, running by way of Auriesville, Johnstown, Palatine Bridge, Danube, Utica, Oriskany Falls, Petersboro, and Cazenovia, ended by the banks of the Otsego. Schoharie village, lying between the Catskills on the south and west and the Helderbergs on the east, was settled during Queen Anne's reign by emigrants from the German Palatinates. Here, on the border of the Indian country, these settlers prospered after the quiet, thrifty fashion of their race, and, when the Revolution came, with the spirit of independence which was theirs through inheritance, sent three companies of sturdy infantrymen to fight in the army of Washington.

At the same time those who remained at home, mindful of the danger which menaced them at their own doors, turned the stone church they had built for Dominie Johannes Schuyler into a fort. Around this defence they erected pickets, with huts inside for the people of the countryside, and when in October, 1780, Sir John Johnson, at the head of a thousand Indians and British regulars, fresh from the ravage of the Mohawk valley, came to give them battle, eight-score Dutch militiamen, cheered on by their wives and sweethearts, offered the invaders such bitter welcome that they were glad to retreat; nor did they thereafter make bold to molest the men and women of Schoharie.

When peace was proclaimed, in 1783, the old stone fort reverted to its original purpose, remaining for many years a house of worship, but, in 1873, it became the property of the county, and is now used as a museum, housing a collection of Indian and colonial relics of signal variety and value. Here are many of the original Indian deeds of the land, with the signature and thumb-marks of the conveyer, household utensils long since gone out of use, and ancient firearms, swords, arrow-heads, and tomahawks, along with the Bible once used by Dominie Schuyler. Even long locks of hair cut from the heads of Schoharie's heroines are here preserved as apt mementos of the brave Dutch women of the Revolution, while just without the fort and facing the village street reposes the body of David Williams, one of the captors of Major André. Williams died in Schoharie in 1831, at the age of seventy-six, and the inscription on the marble shaft above his grave bears grateful although somewhat awkward testimony to the service rendered by this honest and incorruptible yeoman to the patriot cause.

Schoharie stands, as I have said, at one of the natural gateways to the land of the Six Nations, and pushing north to Auriesville along roads in early summer delightful either to drive or wheel over, one encounters at every turn reminders of the time when Indian and settler fought for mastery of the soil. The sites of two vanished border forts are passed in the middle and upper reaches of the Schoharie valley, and Auriesville itself, where we were to spend the night, stands for a heroic and moving chapter in the earliest period of colonial history, for the quiet hamlet is the site of the ancient Indian village of Oserneuon, — centre of the first missionary efforts of the Jesuit Fathers in the Mohawk valley and the spot where Father Jogues and Brother Rene Goupil fell, martyrs to their faith. With these two victims of the tomahawk is now associated in the pious regards of the Catholic world the memory of an Iroquois maiden, — Catherine Tegakwita, the daughter of a Mohawk chief, who was born at the same spot and baptized by the missionaries who came from Canada into the southern wilderness.

Tragedy and romance attended the career of all three of these servants of God. Father Jogues was a native of Orleans in France, who, entering the priesthood in 1636, dedicated himself to the Indian mission in America, and from Canada penetrated the forests of the south, converting and baptizing the natives wherever he went. One of his companions in his wanderings was Brother Rene Goupil, also a Frenchman of good family, a physician who chose to give up his profession to enter the Jesuit priesthood, but through ill health had never been able to stand the test for ordination. Determined to serve the cause of religion, he was retained as a lay adherent of the order, and accompanied the missionaries to the Indians in America.

It was in 1642 that a canoe party of Hurons, with whom Brother Rene and Father Jogues were journeying, fell into an ambush of the Mohawks, their implacable enemies, and those who were not slain were reserved for torture. Forced to run the gauntlet of a double line of chiefs, Brother Rene fell fainting, his body black with blows and mangled and bleeding. As soon as he recovered sufficiently to move again he was tortured afresh, meantime praying for the conversion of his captors, and succeeding even in teaching some of them to pray and to make the sign of the cross. At length a vicious young warrior despatched him with a tomahawk, and the Good Rene, as he was called, fell with the name of Jesus on his lips. Father Jogues was hardly less barbarously treated, but his life was spared temporarily that he might become the slave of an Indian chief, from whom he escaped, only in the end to be recaptured, led to the spot where Brother Rene had been sacrificed, and there put to death.

Ten years afterwards, almost in view of the ground twice dyed with martyrs' blood, was born the Iroquois maiden, Catherine Tegakwita. A demure and thoughtful child, she grew into a modest, gentle girl. With a rare intuition she watched the work of the missionaries until, in her twentieth year, she sought admission to the fold, and on Easter Sunday, 1676, was baptized in the little mission church. Henceforth, says the chronicle, she gave herself entirely to God, body and soul. Her devotion, her austerities, and her good works were constant. She bore insult, derision, and calumny in silence; dedicated herself to a life of celibacy, and amid the turmoil and degradation of a savage society led a life of prayer, penance, and self-denial. She was even deprived of food by her family to force her from her self-immolation, and at length to evade the chance of faltering under these trials betook herself to the humble dwelling of a married sister near Montreal, where, with other pious women of her kind, she passed the remainder of her life in poverty, seclusion, and humility.

Dying at the early age of twenty-four, this devoted and modest maiden constitutes with Father Jogues and Brother Rene a trio in whose memory was reared and dedicated a dozen years ago, at the spot where she was born and converted, the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, to which the faithful now make annual pilgrimage, and the marble of which, gleaming white under the newly-risen sun, gave us our last glimpse of Auriesville as we wheeled north towards the Mohawk, and crossing that stream came, while the morning was still young, to Johnstown, another famous landmark of the land of the Six Nations, and long the home of a man whose claim to a place among the makers of America cannot be gainsaid.

It was in 1738 that a young Irish adventurer, William Johnson by name, crossed the ocean to seek his fortune as a trader among the Indians of New York and Pennsylvania. France and England were then struggling for the mastery of North America, and the Indian question was a burning one, for upon the attitude of the nomads depended the ability of the white settlers to retain their hold on the Mohawk valley and its environs. Johnson was the one man who proved capable of dealing with this problem. He so ingratiated himself with the Indians that in a few years he acquired greater influence than any of their own chiefs could exercise over them. With rare versatility and no little self-sacrifice, he became as good an Iroquois as any of them. He hesitated at nothing in his resolve to gain their confidence. Wearing their dress, adopting their customs, learning to excel in their sports, their woodcraft, and their methods of war, eating their food, speaking their language, using their rhetoric, he became not only a friend, companion, and intimate in their external life, but a power in their councils. In his business dealings with them he adopted integrity as his first principle. He never cheated them and he never lied to them, thus creating a prestige and an influence which enabled him for the rest of his life to control the Iroquois, to baffle the incessant intrigues of the French, and to secure for the defence of the British and Germans in the Mohawk valley a band of warriors whose hands, but for his wisdom and energy, would almost certainly have been turned against them.

Moreover, his work as a mediator between the whites and Indians stood but for a single phase of Johnson's active and many-sided life. Side by side with it he was building his own fortune and amassing a great estate. Very early in his American career he built a stone house on the Mohawk which he called Fort Johnson; in the intervals of his trading journeys among the Indians he found time to be a student of books, and to advance commerce, agriculture, and the breeding of fine sheep and cattle; and he took a notable part, a part which proved him a born soldier, in the war with France which began in 1754, introduced to the world George Washington, and ended with the death of Wolfe and Montcalm, the fall of Quebec and the destruction of the French empire in North America. For his share in this war he was knighted, made Sir William Johnson, and granted ten thousand pounds. Later he was commissioned a major-general in the British army and granted one hundred thousand acres of land; founded the settlement called for himself Johnstown; left Fort Johnson, built the wooden house called Johnson Hall, and under its roof died on the 11th of July, 1774, and was buried beside the Episcopal church, which he had caused to be built in his village of Johnstown.

Truly an uncommon man this, and, although his reputation has suffered in the world's eye in the six-score years and six that have elapsed since his death, — a shrinking of fame chiefly due, be it said, to causes for which he should not be held accountable, — the memory of Sir William Johnson is still a living and vital force in the elm-shaded town which bears his name and in which he is buried. The large hotel of the place is the Sir William Johnson Hotel; the social club is the Fort Johnson Club, and the portrait of the baronet in his red coat hangs in the hall of St. Patrick's Lodge, fifth among the Masonic lodges of the State of New York.

There is no stone to mark Johnson's grave in St. John's church-yard, and there needs none, since the man's name and memory are preserved in a thousand ways; in relics, beside the house he built, and in the ancient Dutch family of Van Vost there has been a son named William Johnson in each of four generations. And finally there is Johnson Hall, — when built the finest house in the Mohawk valley, — a great house, of timber, with a hip-roof, wide halls on the first and second floors, square, wainscoted rooms, great fireplaces, and a mahogany staircase, the like of which probably did not then exist outside of Albany or New York City. This was flanked by two stone structures like block-houses, one of which remains, and around all was once a stone wall, enclosing the plants and shrubbery which Sir William caused to blossom in the wilds. There are still some tall poplars which he planted, so old that buttresses have grown up about their trunks, and look high abroad as the sentries did of yore.

Sir John Johnson, son of the builder, was driven from Johnson Hall by the rising storm of the Revolution, which broke out in 1774, the year Sir William died. He returned from Canada to his confiscated estate to secure two barrels of silver dollars hidden and saved through the faithfulness of a slave, and to burn and kill in the country filled with his father's old friends and his own. Then at the close of the war the Johnson family and the baronetcy remained a Canadian possession, and Johnson Hall, sold by the sequestration commissioners, passed into the hands of the Wells family, who have held it for four generations. The house has been somewhat modernized, but is, for the most part, the house of the eighteenth century. If ghosts walked now it should troop with them in still and starless nights.

Late afternoon of the second day of our pilgrimage through the land of the Six Nations brought us to Palatine Bridge, on the north bank of the Mohawk, and to the manor-house of the Freys, where a family of Swiss extraction has flourished ever since their ancestor settled there in 1689. The children now playing about the lawn of the old stone mansion belong to the ninth generation thriving on the same spot. Descending a glade adorned with noble elms, the approach passes up to the summit of an eminence on which the house is charmingly situated, overlooking the Mohawk rolling down its green valley, the trains which every few minutes disturb its quiet, the slowly passing barges on the canal opposite old Fort Van Rensselaer, and the town of Canajoharie nestling underneath the bluffs beyond, or creeping up its gorge from shelf to shelf to their crests.

Palatine Bridge, in part an antiquated, covered structure and in part of more modern iron, crosses a broad, low meadow before it reaches the brink of the water, fringed with willows and overhanging copses of green. It derived its name long ago from the Germans from the Palatinate of the Rhine who settled hereabouts, and whose descendants form a considerable part of the population. The mansion, set amid elms and locusts, is a substantial specimen in graystone of the handiwork of the builders of colonial days, dating from 1738, with ample apartments, broad hall and staircase, and, in general a fine, old-fashioned air of high hospitalities.

Inside the mansion is housed a collection of antique relics at once rare and curious, gathered by the present master of the manorhouse, and including numerous mementos of the vanished Iroquois, — weapons of flint, stone, and copper, necklaces of amber, and others made from the finger bones of captives taken in war, a multitude of pipes or calumets, tomahawks of brass and iron, and a Mohawk totem or charm carved in black dolomite. The assembling of these Indian relics has been, their owner told us, all interesting and easy task, for almost every knoll through this part of the Mohawk valley bears traces of having once been the seat of an Indian village or burial-place. Tokens of their feasts or warfare are constantly turned up by the plough or washed out by the rain; the shoals of the river after every freshet reveal some hammer-stone or spear-head, and their graves contain the objects they most dearly prized, devoted by affection to the memory of their dead.

As the manor-house set over against Canajoharie  recalls the past played by the Freys in the early history of the Mohawk valley, so another old mansion in the little town of Danube, whence we wheeled from Palatine Bridge along a leafy road which rarely wandered from the river's winding bank, brings to mind the patriotic career and heroic death of sturdy Nicholas Herkimer. The house in which this fine old hero lived and died was erected in 1764, built of Holland brick, three stories high, and in its time merited the title of mansion. The general's dust lies in the burial-ground of his family, a few rods east of the old house, which is yet inhabited. Only a plain marble slab marks the spot, but Herkimer's name is written broad on the face of the country lying between Danube and Oriskany Falls, which we found it easy to cover in a summer afternoon, and which was the theatre of the brilliant and decisive campaign in which he fought and died and won immortal honor.

General Herkimer was born about 1715, his father, a native of the Rhine Palatinates, being the first white settler in the county which now bears his name. The younger Herkimer early became an officer of militia and saw much hard fighting during the French and Indian War. When the Revolution came he had become one of the best-known and most influential citizens of his province, and his prompt and cordial support of the patriot cause added not a little to its strength in Central New York.

On the other hand, as has already been noted, Sir John Johnson, son and heir of the lord of Johnson Hall, threw in his lot with the royalists, and took refuge in Canada, whence early in 1777 word came that he was planning an invasion of the Mohawk at the head of a horde of Mohawks and Tories, and had sworn to destroy every settlement in the valley. The New York authorities, warned of Sir John's designs, made haste to strengthen the defences of old Fort Stanwix, on the present site of the city of Rome, and to garrison there a force of seven hundred and fifty men, commanded by Colonel Peter Gansevoort and Colonel Marinus Willett.

These preparations were made none too soon, for during the ensuing summer Colonel Barry St. Leger, keeping time with Burgoyne's descent upon Northern New York, sailed from Montreal to Oswego, where he formed a junction with the Tories and Indians, who under the lead of Johnson and Joseph Brant, the ablest war chief of the Six Nations, had gathered at that place to the number of thirteen hundred fighting men. From Oswego he started at the head of a force of seventeen hundred men for the Mohawk valley, intending to crush the rebellious elements there, and thence march to meet Burgoyne at Albany. On August 3 St. Leger appeared before Fort Stanwix, which had lately been renamed Fort Schuyler, and his summons to surrender being rejected, at once laid siege to the place.

Meanwhile, General Herkimer had summoned the militia of Tryon County to the defence of the beleaguered garrison, and the morning of the 4th saw nearly a thousand men assembled about Fort Dayton, the appointed place of rendezvous, near the present site of the town of Herkimer. It was a motley gathering, in which sturdy farmers in homespun and leather touched elbows with fine gentlemen of the county clad in blue and buff, but its every member was mastered by the desire to be brought face to face with the foe. Herkimer, knowing well how the Indians fought, was for making haste slowly in the march upon the enemy, but his followers would listen to no pleas for delay and caution, and in the end the general reluctantly ordered an advance.

The road leading west from Fort Dayton was but a rude path through the wilderness, in many places almost impassable; and despite their hot-headed ardor, the advancing force travelled but slowly. They crossed the river at old Fort Schuyler, now Utica, and encamped the next day some six miles farther on, a little west of the present village of Whitesboro. From this point General Herkimer sent forward an express, of three men, to apprise Colonel Gansevoort of his approach and to concert measures of cooperation. Their arrival at the fort was to be announced by three successive discharges of cannon. The task assigned this trio was a difficult and dangerous one, but they succeeded in reaching the fort late in the forenoon 13 — I noon of the 6th, and the concerted signals were immediately fired. General Herkimer's intention was to cut an entrance through to the fort, and arrangements for a sally were accordingly made by Colonel Gansevoort, in order to divert the enemy's attention from Herkimer's movements.

However, the old general in forming this plan had calculated without his host. On the morning of the 6th his men, who had been with difficulty persuaded to remain quiet during the preceding day, broke out into something very like mutiny, declaring that the express had in all probability been captured or murdered, and that the same fate was in store for them if they frittered away their time in idle waiting. Their loud complainings alarmed the commander, and hastly summoning a council of his officers, he laid the situation before them. The officers were unanimous in their desire to press forward, and, thoroughly enraged, the stout old general, with flushed face and gleaming eye, at last cried, “March on, then!” Instantly the troops grasped their arms, the camp was struck, and the little army rushed forward.

Meanwhile, Colonel St. Leger, apprised by his scouts of the advance of the militia, had, very early on the morning of the 6th, despatched Brant, with nearly all his Indians and a detachment of Johnson's Tories, with instructions to, if possible, prevent their farther progress. The van of Herkimer's command was hastily descending the steep slope of a ravine, some two miles west of Oriskany, when suddenly the guards, both front and flanks, were shot down, the forest rang with the crack of musketry and the yells of concealed savages, and in a twinkling the greater part of the division found itself hemmed in, as it were, by a circle of fire that mowed down the outer ranks like grass before a scythe.

But the environed militia, after the first shock of surprise had passed, proved themselves able to wrest a victory from what seemed certain defeat. In this they were furnished a magnificent example by their general, who, wounded early in the action, while seeking to rally his men, by a ball which shattered his leg just below the knee, was propped, at his own request, against a beech-tree half-way up the slope, where he coolly lighted his pipe, and though the bullets were whistling and men falling thick and fast about him, continued to direct the battle, giving his orders as calmly as if on a parade ground.

At last, after several hours of desperate fighting, the Indians, finding their number sadly diminished, and dismayed by the stubborn valor of the Provincials, fled in every direction, followed by cheers and showers of bullets from the surviving patriots. As they fled yelping through the woods the guns of the fort were heard booming in the distance. Dismayed in their turn by this unwelcome sound, the Tories followed their Indian allies, leaving the victorious militia in possession of the hard-earned field.

So ended the battle of Oriskany, one of the most hotly contested and, for the number engaged, the deadliest of the Revolutionary battles. Of the thousand men who marched upon the enemy so confidently on that fatal 6th of August only one-third ever saw their homes again. Between three and four hundred lay dead upon the field when the sun went down, and nearly as many more were mortally wounded or carried into captivity. General Herkimer was borne in a litter to his house at Danube, where, after lingering in pain for about ten days, he died.

Although the Provincials were victorious at Oriskany, their triumph was a barren one, for they were wholly unable to follow up their advantage or to afford assistance to their beleaguered comrades. St. Leger and his men continued the siege of Fort Schuyler for upward of a fortnight, when, news reaching them of the approach of a relieving army led by Benedict Arnold, regulars and allies joined in a panic-stricken retreat, which ended only when the rabble reached Oneida Lake. Thence St. Leger hastened on to Oswego and Montreal. Compared with the more extensive conflicts of the Revolution, that in defence of Fort Schuyler appears insignificant, but as a struggle, fierce and bloody beyond parallel, and as a heavy blow to the plans and prospects of the crown, it holds, together with its heroes, famous and nameless, an enduring place in the chronicles of Revolutionary valor.

The thoughtful pilgrim, following the old trail to Fort Schuyler, is sure to turn aside at Utica for a visit to the spot where sturdy and great-hearted Baron Steuben passed the last years of his eventful, wandering life and is buried; and from the battle-field of Oriskany, where a monument, unveiled with appropriate ceremonies some years ago, now commemorates the bravery of Herkimer and his men, it is an easy and pleasant westing, by way of hilly and quiet Petersboro, former home of that stout apostle of freedom, Gerrit Smith, to Cazenovia, leafy nest of the noble and stately Linklaen homestead.

Steuben's grave well deserves a visit if only for the memories it evokes. When death was near the stout old soldier, who at Valley Forge had transformed the disheartened and undisciplined patriot forces into a well-drilled and efficient army, gave directions for his burial. He was living then on the noble stretch of land given him for his services during the Revolution, his home a log house in the woody wilderness, and his only companions the few domestics he had carried with him into his Oneida County solitude.

To these he gave instructions for his interment and the guardianship of his grave. He was to be buried in the woods, in a secluded spot, and the trees were to be left to lie as they fell. So his grave was made in the depth of the forest, and there he lay in solitude for upward of half a century. In 1870, however, the remains of Steuben were taken up and reburied on a wooded knoll about half a mile from the old grave. Here two years later there was erected a monument, — a square pile of masonry, with guns at the corners, pyramids of cannon-balls placed about it, and a marble block above it bearing in raised letters the word “Steuben.” The knoll which this tomb crowns is four miles from the village of Remsen. A road runs close by, but it is seldom visited, and seems to share the strange neglect that has fallen upon the memory of the man who was one of the wisest and bravest of the republic's builders.

Linklaen Mansion, Cazenovia, New York

The old Linklaen mansion and its builder merit also a passing word. When, following the Revolution, the Holland Land Company, made up of thrifty Amsterdam merchants, purchased from the State of New York one hundred thousand acres of land in the Genesee country, lying in what are now the counties of Chenango and Madison, it sent Jan von Linklaen, a young naval lieutenant of twenty-two, yet prudent and sagacious beyond his years, to take charge of its holdings and found the town of Cazenovia. This he did in 1793, and ere a decade was ended found himself surrounded by a prosperous community in the place where he had elected to make his home. Tradition proves Linklaen to have been much more than a common man. His acquaintance included many of the choicest minds of his time, among them Talleyrand, and his tastes were refined and scholarly, as is evinced by his varied and extensive library. He died suddenly in 1822. The house, which is his most imposing monument, stands at the foot of Lake Cazenovia and commands a sweeping view of that pretty sheet of water. Built in 1806, it is still occupied by his descendants and promises to easily outlast another century.

It is a long and hard day's journey from Cazenovia to Cooperstown, at the outlet of Otsego Lake, but it carries one through some of the fairest parts of Central New York, and in the present instance furnished a fit conclusion to our journey through the land of the Six Nations, for the noblest monument to the memory of the Iroquois are the romances of Fenimore Cooper, and Cooper dwelt and wrote and died in the town called after his father's name. It is true that the novelist was not born in Cooperstown, but he was carried there when a child in arms, and the village and the region about it were always very dear to him. He wrote a history of the village, entitled “The Chronicles of Cooperstown,” in 1838, a slender volume, marred in certain parts by an expression of some of its author's peculiar views and mannerisms, but altogether very interesting. In addition to this, the third novel Cooper wrote, “The Pioneers,” which, as he declares in the preface, he wrote “to please himself,” was intended to be a description of frontier life as he saw it in his boyhood days at Cooperstown. The scenes and characters were all real, and apparent through the thin disguise of names and the modifications of a plot.

In middle life, after he had drunk his fill of fame and after his long sojourn in Europe, when he had returned to Cooperstown to pass the remainder of his days, Cooper wrote “The Deerslayer,” the scene of which is laid directly on Otsego Lake and around the borders thereof in the year of 1745, at a time when all the country west of Albany was an unbroken wilderness. He had already written three novels of the Leatherstocking series, and in the last of the three, “The Prairie,” had brought the life of the old trapper to an end; but, nevertheless, he wished, in spite of the dramatic incongruity, to revivify him and present him in early manhood on his first war-path. This novel Cooper wrote with his heart in his work. He loved the locality, the theme was thoroughly congenial, and the result is a novel powerful and fascinating and of its kind well-nigh perfect. And who to-day recognizes the incongruity in the order of creation? The Leatherstocking series is now complete. The “Deerslayer” reads indeed almost like a veracious history, and the book seems like a guide to the incidents of the tale.

Cooper made his home in the town his father had founded from the second year of his childhood until he entered literary life at the age of thirty-one. Thereafter he dwelt elsewhere until 1833, when he returned to Cooperstown, and lived there until his death in 1851. Otsego Hall, where for many years he had kept open house, passed into other hands shortly after his death. It was transformed into a hotel, and later was partially burned, falling at last into utter and complete decay. Recently, however, the spacious site of the hall has been converted into a charming little park, which will be known in future as the Cooper Grounds.

Cooper and the other members of his family are buried in the Episcopal church-yard immediately in the rear of this park. The Cooper plot lies in the shadow of the church, a brick structure, with spire and buttresses and long Gothic stained windows. Here rest the novelist, his father, mother, brother, wife, son, and daughters. His wife came from the old Dutch-Huguenot family of De Lanceys, and, as is well remembered, first induced him to become a maker of books. Cooper's grave is marked only by a plain slab, but a monument to his memory has been erected in the cemetery on the slope of Mount Vision, just beyond the spot made famous by the panther scene in “The Pioneers.” This monument, a tall shaft of Italian marble, is surmounted by a figure of Natty Bumpo, who is represented in the act of loading his rifle, with gaze fixed on the waters of the Haunted Lake, and a faithful hound at his side. Thus Cooperstown honors herself by honoring in various ways the name and fame of her most gifted son.

All about the old home of Cooper, now grown into a thriving village, much frequented by summer visitors, are points of interest and great natural beauty. Crossing the stone bridge which spans the Susquehanna just below the outlet, one can continue by a carriage road to Mount Vision, or, preferably, Prospect Rock, just below it, which commands a noble view of the village, the lake, and the sloping hills on the west side thereof, which Cooper declared resembled English park scenery. The road along the east side of the lake also commands many fine views. Cooper said that well-travelled persons — and he was himself a well-travelled man — declared it to be one of the finest within their knowledge. About a mile from the village a path leads from the road to Leatherstocking Cave, which is half a mile distant in the cliff which faces the upper part of the ridge. The path is steep the latter part of the way, but the cave is well worth a visit. Leatherstocking Falls, on the west side of the lake, is a pretty cascade in a leafy dell, and near the outlet of the Susquehanna is Otsego Rock, which tradition says was formerly a council rock and place of meeting for the Iroquois. It rises out of the water a few feet from the shore and is about the size and shape of a haycock. It derives its chief significance, however, from the fact that it was the place where the Deerslayer met Chingachook, the young chief of the Delawares, who had come up from the hunting-grounds of his tribe to rescue his intended bride from the Hurons, who held her captive.

The outlet, where the Susquehanna begins its long journey, is another fascinating spot. Cooper, in “The Deerslayer,” represents it as well-nigh concealed by overhanging trees, which have now entirely disappeared from the west shore, though there is a margin of shade along the eastern side. It was here that Hutter's lumbering ark, slowly pulled up-stream from its leafy ambush below and about to emerge into the lake, had such a narrow escape from capture by the Indians who had been lying in wait on a huge tree which hung over the lake, and leaping too late as the ark, warned of danger, was hurried beneath, tumbled one after another into the water. There they lie until this day, but they live again in Cooper's pages, and, perhaps, of moonless nights their harmless wraiths come once more to the shores of the Haunted Lake, set down in the heart of the old land of the Six Nations.