The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1896-10-07
WOODS EXPERIMENT,
n CHARMING STORY or LORE AND
POLITICS
That Touches the Issues OF the Campaign
A Practical Illustration of the Failacy
of the silver Craze.

ness lies Jne county OF E1dlHllIOu-
greater in area han the State of Della
ware, less in population than the State
of Nevada, it is a community peculiar
in the Eastern United States. With
three thousand square miles and four
thousand inhabitants, it has not a bank,
a lawyer, MOI a railroad. Two consid-
cradle settlements are found in the
southern part of the county, at Wells
and Indian Lake, but the bulk Of the
population is scattered in farms and
logging-camps through the wilderness.
The chief, indeed almost the only, per-
mapent industries ere numbering, farm
ing, guiding" and the vending of in
toxicating liquors at retail.
As Hamilton County is to-day, so it
has been for nearly a hundred years.
Long before the days when Andrew
Jackson was president this mountain
community was in numbers, character
and occupation what it now is, and,
going further back, we find its settle
ments as early as almost any in the his
tory of New York.
Here it was that young Sam Butler,
with a patty of Tories and Canada In
dians, came in the early summer of
1777, crossing the wilderness with sol
diers and artillery by incredible effort,
to strike the Tryon County patriots in
the flank, while st. Leger took them in
the front, hoping 80 to break down that
rear-guard of the Revolution which at
Oriskany foiled the British plan and
made possible the browning victory of
Saratoga. 1t was on the shore of Lake
Piseco hat Sam Butler and the British
Major Sinclair, a few hours march
ahead of their men, were met by Indian
canoe-men, who told them of tough old
Herkimer's stout fight at Oriskapy, and
so alarmed their followers, both white
and red, that the whole troop fled pre-.
cipitately 10 Canada, saving only one
of the eighteen brass cannon which
were to have garrisoned the projected
Tory fort on the Mohawk. Its seven
teen companions rusted in the damps
of the forest for nearly a hundred years,
and then discharged their volley upon
the peaceful Sacandaga settlements in
less fierce, but perhaps as dangerous a
guise, as Butler had planned in the
days of King George.
Once upon a time it was a pleasant
bPllhR hOOu, anu III lhO hoNON
of the great forest Davy Dunlap was
picking up logs with a chain, a large
iron hook and a pair of horses. The
hook caught on something solid, heavy,
well sunk into the ground, brought up
the team with a jerk and broke loose
again. The yellow CLEAN where it had
struck caught Davy's eye. In an in
slant he was down on his knees prod
ding away with his peevy, until he had
brought to light a long, round object
which, through its coating of rust and
dirt, showed the bright yellow color
wherever struck by the metal. All the
mountain stories of buried treasure
and fabulous gold mines came to Davy's
recollection. He sprang to his feet and
ran for his father, who was busy at the
skidway, not far off.
In response to Davy's somewhat in
coherent narrative, Andy Dunlap came
slowly, looked at the mysterious find
and then peered around him through
the dim aisles of the forest. With
crowbar he sounded one object and an
other half hidden under moss and rot
ting logs, and found here a brass can
non, and there the form of a gone
wheel or wood-sled. Something queer
had happened there, and something
queer was on the ground-but it wasn't
gold.
If the news of Davy's find, as i
spread through the woods, had come tC
an antiquarian, he would have secured
the guns for the museum at Albany
If it had come to the small boys of
large town, just before the Fourth o.
July, the guns would SOC have shouted
for the independence of the rebels tina
they had marched from Canada to sub
jugate; but before either antiquarian
or celebrating boys had heard the story
Davy's find came to the knowledge o
a political economist-to the knowledge
of Jimmy Tryon of Pumpkin Hollow.
Pumpkin Hollow lies in a small
clearing by a beautiful wooded bend o.
the Sascadaga River, in the town o
Hope, and there Jimmy had grown up
watching the wagons come up the roaC
and the logs go down the river, unit
he was sixteen. Then he had wan
dered down to Gloversville, in Fulton
County, where there were a railroad
and a bank. Jimmy learned hat N
one could ride on a railroad with0u
paying his fare, and no one could &c
money out of a bank unless he had pu
some inland be became a Populis
and wandered on to Albany, wher
there are a Museum and a Legislature
But Jimmy soon learned that ther
were greater curosities to be seen thai
the Albany ones, and wandered fur
ther, until he came to a city with a bi
white obelisk at one end and a bi
white dome at the other. In this cit
there were a great many men, each Q
whom could talk more than any of tn
rest, and what they did not talk the
printed in the Record.
From these men Jimmy learned
great many things which he had ne
learned in the red sc~hool-house. FL
learned that the number of cows tai
required to reach to the moon did nj
at all depend upon the length of til
tails. He learned that Shakespeai
was wrong in saying that "the thin
we call a rose by any other name woul
smell as sweet" but that Mr.. Ign
titus DOnnellV had proved that II