The record-union., 1897-08-15
NORTH WOODS EXPERIMENT.

away up ia TIE AQlTOuQaGk N1IQcT-
ness lies the county of Hamilton.
Greater in area than the State Of Del
aware, 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, 1t has not
bank, lawyer, nor a railroad. Two
considerable 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 will
derness. The chief, indeed, almost the
only, permanent industries are lumber
ing, farming, guiding" and the vend
ing of intoxicating liquors at retail.
AS Hamilton County is to-day, SO it
has been for nearly hundred years.
Long before the days when Andrew
Jackson was President, this mountain
community was in numbers, charac-
ter. and occupation what it now is,
and going further back we find its set
Elements as early as almost any in the
history of New York. The pleasure
seeker among it's lakes and mountains
is hourly reminded that here Iroquois
and Algonquin, and after them patriot
and Tory, fought for these miles of
rugged forests and blooming meadow.
Here it was that young Sam Butler,
with a party Of Tories and Canadian
Indians, came in the early summer of
1417, crossing the wilderness with SOL
diers and artillery by incredible eff
fort, to strike the Tryon County patri
OTIS in the flank, While ST. Leger took
them in the front, hoping SO to break
down that rear guard of the Revolu-
tion which at Oriskany foiled the Brit
ish plan and made possible the crown
ing victory of Saratoga. 1t was on
the shore of Lake Pisco that Sam But
| Ter 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 Herlximers S
stout fight at OrSkany, and SO alarmed
| their followers, both white and red,
| that the whole troop filed precipitately
to Canada, saving only one, and that
the lightest of the eighteen brass can
non which were to have garriSoned the
projected Tory fort on the Mohawk;
that one gun, taken two years before by
the British from the Massachusetts
men at Bunker Hill, was saved at all
cost, perhaps as a trophy, perhaps be-
cause the ightest in weight, and now
stands in the citadel at Quebec. It's
seventeen companions rusted in the
damps of the forest for nearly a hun
dred 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
spring afternoon, and in the shadows
of the great forest Davy Dunlap was
picking up logs with a chain, 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 1T 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 Davys
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 incoherent mar
rative, Andy Dunlap came slowly,
looked at the mysterious find, and then
peered around him through the dim
aisles of the forest. With a crowbar
he sounded one object and another half
hidden under moss and rotting logs, and
found here a brass cannon, 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 it
spread through the woods had come to
an antiquarian, he would have secured
the guns for the museum at Albany
If it had come to the small boys of a
large town just before the Fourth of
! July, the guns would soon have shouted
for the independence of the rebels that
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 of a
| political economist-to the knowledge
of Jimmy Tryon, the boy orator of
pumpkin Hollow.
Pumpkin Hollow lies in a small clear
ing by beautiful wooded bend of the
Sacandaga River in the town of Hope,
and there Jimmy had grown up, watch
| ing the wagons come up the road and
the logs go down the river, until he
was sixteen. Then he had wandered
! down to Gloversville in Fulton County,
where there was a railroad and a bank
Jimmy learned that no one could ride
| on a railroad without paying his fare,
| and no one could get money out of a
bank unless he had put some in, and
| he became Populist and wandered on
to Albany, where there are a museum
| and a Legislature. But Jimmy soon
| learned that there We're greater Curl
/ oSitieS to be seen than the Albany
ones, and wandered further until he
came to a city with a big white obe-
| lisk at one end and a big white dome
| at the other. In this city there were
a great many men, each of whom
could talk more than any of the rest,
| and what they did not talk they print
| ed in the Record.
From these men Jimmy learned a
great many things which he had not
learned in the red schoolhouse He
| learned that the number of cows tails
| required to reach to the moon did not
at all depend on the length OF the
tails. He learned that Shakespeare was
wrong in saying that "the thing we call
a rose by any other name would smell
| as sweet but that Ignatius Donnelly
had proved the Bard of Avon ought to
have said: Call anything a rose; when
marked with such a name twill smell
l &c l., La I,n+ r.r,,,