picturesque character which it so eminently possesses.

[Footnote 59: From Chapters I and III of "The Pioneers." Cooper's
father, Judge William Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown, first
visited Otsego Lake in 1785, built a house there in 1787 and in 1790
made it the permanent home of his family. In 1790 the place contained
35 other people. The selection here given pictures the circumstances
in which Judge Cooper, as well as Marmaduke Temple, visited Otsego
Lake. Fenimore Cooper was not two years old when his father settled
there. His native place was Burlington, N. J. Judge Cooper's settling
at Cooperstown was a consequence of his having acquired, through
foreclosure, extensive lands which George Croghan had failed in an
attempt to settle, near the lake. Except for this circumstance, it is
unlikely that his son ever would have acquired that intimate knowledge
of Indian and frontier life of which he has left such notable pictures
in his books.]

The vales are narrow, rich and cultivated, with a stream uniformly
winding through each. Beautiful and thriving villages are found
interspersed along the margins of the small lakes, or situated at
those points of the stream which are favorable for manufacturing; and
neat and comfortable farms, with every indication of wealth about
them, are scattered profusely through the vales, and even to the
mountain tops. Roads diverge in every direction from the even and
graceful bottoms of the valleys to the most rugged and intricate
passes of the hills. Academies[60] and minor edifices of learning meet
the eye of the stranger at every few miles as he winds his way through
this uneven territory, and places for the worship of God abound with
that frequency which characterizes a moral and reflecting people, and
with that variety of exterior and canonical government which flows
from unfettered liberty of conscience....

[Footnote 60: An "academy" was a high school or seminary, of which an
example could be found as late as fifty years ago in almost every
prosperous village of Central New York.]

It was near the setting of the sun, on a clear, cold day in December,
when a sleigh was moving slowly up one of the mountains in the
district we have described. The day had been fine for the season, and
but two or three large clouds, whose color seemed brightened by the
light reflected from the mass of snow that covered the earth, floated
in a sky of the purest blue. The road wound along the brow o