His childhood and youth were spent in the village of Hamilton, a place once renowned for its prosperous manufactories, but which has long since verified the predictions of the bard-- "That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, As ocean sweeps the labored mole away." Its location is on one of the beautiful and sparkling affluents of the Towasentha or Norman's Kill, popularly called the Hongerkill, which he has in one of his occasional publications called the Iosco, from an aboriginal term.

That picturesque and lofty arm of the Catskills, which is called the Helderberg, bounds the landscape on the west and south, while the Pine Plains occupy the form of a crescent, between the Mohawk and the Hudson, bearing the cities of Albany and Schenectady respectively on its opposite edges.

Across this crescent-like Plain of Pines, by a line of sixteen miles, was the ancient Iroquois war and trading path.

The Towasentha lies on the south borders of this plain, and was, on the first settlement of the country, the seat of an Indian population.

Here, during the official term of Gen.