Year: 1860

Hop Culture -Cooperstown---otsego Lake,


His Dog.
TO tie Editors Of tie Erning Post:


Having just returned from visit to that
portion OF the state which expected to derive
so much benefit from the vetoed Susquehanna
Railroad BILL suppose you would like to hear
something of that region. II may be considc-
ed the centre of the hop growth, one of those
crops whose value is almost as mutable as spec
ulative stocks, and bears the same relation to
the other agricultural products that the fancies
do TO sound, dividend-paying Wall street sccu-
rites. A few years since, large fortunes were
made from them, when the prices reached up
wards of fifty cents pound On the other hand,
as much was lost when the price fell to two
cents pound.


Hop culture is said TO be very expensive, re-
quiring a return of twelve cents pound to
Weld and profit. This branch of agriculture is
always precarious, for the hop vine has many
enemies, not only in the soil but in the amtos-
phcre. TO the original difficulties an expert
ment, for the purpose of reducing the expense
of the fixtures, has added new and more des-
tructive assailant, namely, electricity; many
cultivators having substituted for two poles
which are brought down from Canada-to each
hill, large posts at either end of each drill
connected by wires, from which depended cords
for the vines 10 grow upon. One large operator
undertook to steady the longitudinal wires by
transverse connecting wires. The result was,
a flash of lightning killed every vine in an area
of several acres, at one stroke.


Leaving the Central Railroad at Fort Plain
we took carriage, crossed the Mohawk by a
fine new iron bridge, assembled the valley of the
Ocquago, and thence along the west shore of
the lake, reaching Cooperstown after q five
hours drive, which consumed more time than
is required to accomplish transit from New
York to Albany, and vet the distance is only
twenty-seven miles. The road, turnpike, is
kept in good ORDER considering the heavy team
ing done upon it, but is altogether too narrow
1t was formerly plank roud, but required so
great an outlay to keep it in order and make it
remunerative, that the plank has been taken up.
1t is strange what signal failures have attended
the establishment of plank roads, from which
so much was expected, even in districts where
the lumber is most cheap.


The Ocqudgo is the Indian name for a brook
which the Dutch settlers of the Mohawk Valley
styled Quak, or QuakkenkW, sgnifying a brook
which makes noise in falling. This name is
eminently applicable, fer nothing can exceed
the somniforous influence of its waters. brawl-
ing or mui muring over its grayelly and rocky
bed.


! 1t is needless to dwell upon the beauties of
Otsega lake, the environs of which are even
more picturesque than the majority of the
Swiss lakes, whose superiority is only attribute
bic TO the nearer or more distant background
Of capped mountains.


! 'Cooperstown has changed but little since the
writer's last visit, about thirty years ago. The
greatest change perceptible is the clearing up
of the dense forests which then clothed the
shores of Otsego. Nothing can be more ex-
qusite than the view up the lake from the bal
cony of the cottage built by the accomplished
daughters of the great American novelist, Coop
cr. Their house. constructed of brick from the
ruins of their fathers dwelling, known as the
Otsego House or Mansion, looks up the lake
and down upon the tranquil Susquehanna from
bluff clothed with the most beautiful of our
evergreens, the silver pine.


The next day we returned to Canaioharie or
Palatine Bridge by the road along the east side
of the lake. In the Mohawk Valley the weather
was so sultry, that we could scarcely convince
ourselves that fire had been necessary TO make
our breakfast-room comfortable OH the shore of
the lake.


From Cooperstown TO Paatine Bridge is over
twenty miles. The road along the east
shore is very good, but much more hilly than
that on the opposite side. 1t runs through an
almost continuous line of hop-yards.


At the north end of the lake, on the east side
of mountain projecting into it, stands the en-
ormous mansion built by the Provincial Cover
nor Clark, which is said to have cost hundred
thousand dollars, at time when labor less than
one-half as expensive as it is at present. The
round-home-lying orchards, upon the same slope
of the mountain, are at once the most extensive,
regular and thrifty ws saw throughout our long
journey.


About midway between Cooperstown and the
Mohawk we passed through hamlet most ap-
propriately named Springfield Hollow, since it
is seated at the bottom of deep valley which
resembles huge hopper or shallow tour-sided
funnel. The road descends into this hollow
along the slope of ridge, which might almost
be termed a mountain, winding down through
a deep ravine which seemed to be from one
hundred and fifty to two hundred feet deep from
the carriage way TO the bed of the brook which
tumbles through it.


The ride for the greater part of the distance
is romantic and beautiful. 1t passes close to
the white marble shaft, surmounted by Leather
Stocking and his Dog, erected TO the memory
of the American novelist, Cooper, and under
the limestone ledge in which the old hunter
had his dismal abode, whose description forms
one of the most agreeable episodes in the first
of the novels in which he figures as a hero.
) As railroad is projected to connect the val
ley of the Susquehanna with those Of the Mo
hawk and Hudson, year or two hence the iron
horse will have broken up one Of the few re-
, naming stage routes with which our state was
once intersected ANCHOR.