ly acquainted with that
magnificent domain. The country bordering upon Lake Ontario abounded in
fur-bearing animals at that period, and both the partners foretold
Rochester, Oswego, and the other lake ports, before any white man had
built a log hut on their site.

Astor invested his profits in city lots, but Peter Smith bought great
tracts of land in northern and western New York. He sometimes bought
townships at a single purchase, and when he died he owned in the State
not far from a million acres. His prosperity, however, was of little
advantage to him, for as he advanced in life a kind of religious gloom
gained possession of him. He went about distributing tracts, and became
at length so much impaired in his disposition that his wife could not
live with him; finally, he withdrew from business and active life, made
over the bulk of his property to his son, Gerrit, and, settling in
Schenectady, passed a lonely and melancholy old age.

Gerrit Smith, the son of this strong and perturbed spirit, was educated
at Hamilton College, near Utica, where he figured in the character, very
uncommon at colleges in those days, of rich man's son; a strikingly
handsome, winning youth, with flowing hair and broad Byron collar, fond
of all innocent pleasures, member of a card club, and by no means
inattentive to his dress. It seems, too, that at college he was an
enthusiastic reader of passing literature, although in after days he
scarcely shared in the intellectual life of his time. At the age of
twenty-two he was a married man. He fell in love at college with the
president's daughter, who died after a married life of only seven
months. Married happily a second time a year or two after, he settled at
his well-known house in Peterboro, a village near Oswego, where he lived
ever after. The profession of the law, for which he had prepared
himself, he never practiced, since the care of his immense estate
absorbed his time and ability; as much so as the most exacting
profession. In all those operations which led to the development of
Oswego from an outlying military post into a large and thriving city,
Gerrit Smith was of necessity a leader or participant,--for the best of
his property lay in that region.

And here was his first misfortune. Rich as he was, his estate was all
undeveloped, and nothing but the personal labor of the owner could make
it of value. For twenty years or more he was the slave of his estate. He
could not travel abro