larly at the mercy of freaks of weather, and its preparation for
the market is beset by many possibilities of failure. It is a crop of
which it is most difficult to count the final cost, or to predict the
market price. It has varied in price more than any other product of the
soil. In 1878 the entire crop was marketed at from five to twelve cents
a pound. But for many years every farmer in Otsego remembered the season
of 1882-83, when the average cost of producing a pound of hops was ten
cents, and hops were selling at a dollar a pound, so that, as was said
at the time, "five pounds of hops could be exchanged for a barrel of
flour."[126] Many farmers made money at this time, but some held their
hops for an even higher price, and lost. One farmer held thousands of
pounds of hops in his great barn, and kept buying in the crops of other
farmers, awaiting a price of $1.20, at which he had resolved to sell.
Two years later the hops were still in the barn, and nine-tenths of
their value was lost. There were other tragedies of this sort, yet for
years afterward, while some continued to grow hops at a fair profit,
many a farmer in the vicinity of Cooperstown, lured by the hope of a
dollar-a-pound season, was kept on the verge of poverty by his faith in
the golden vine.

[Illustration: MAP OF OTSEGO LAKE]

Otsego Lake is chiefly famous as the scene of events in two of Cooper's
_Leather-Stocking Tales_. There are glimpses of it in _The Pioneers_,
while in _The Deerslayer_ the whole action revolves about this lake,
which throughout the story is called the "Glimmerglass." The scenes of
incidents in these two tales are still pointed out on Otsego Lake, and
have become as much a part of its history as of its romance.

[Illustration: THE SUSQUEHANNA, near its source]

To begin with points described in _The Deerslayer_, the beehive-shaped
rock where the youthful Leather-Stocking had his rendezvous with
Chingachgook is that now known as Council Rock, and still juts above the
water at the outlet of the lake, near the western shore of the
Susquehanna's source. Here it was that exactly at sunset, to keep his
appointment with Leather-Stocking, the tall, handsome, and athletic
young Delaware Indian suddenly appeared in full war-paint, standing upon
the rock, having escaped his lurking foes. Not far from this point, at a
short distance down the river, Deerslayer got his first glimpse of the
beautiful Judith Hutter, as she peered from the w