be something left for the careful gleaner;
and the experienced eye, within a short walk along riverbank or
lakeshore, is certain to light upon some memento of the vanished Indian,
while every fresh turning of the soil reveals some record of savage
life.

Morgan describes an Indian trail as being from twelve to eighteen inches
wide, and, where the soil was soft, often worn to a depth of twelve
inches. Deeply as these trails were grooved in the earth by centuries of
use, it is to be doubted if many traces of them now remain, although
over the summit of Hannah's Hill, sheltered by thick pine woods, just
west of the village, there runs toward the lake a trail, which, though
long disused, is clearly marked, and is believed to have been worn by
the feet of Indians. It is indeed possible that this is a remaining
segment of the great trail from the north, which, as Morgan's map[4]
shows, here touched Otsego Lake, and bent toward the southwest. For, in
1911, a likely trace of it was found by Frank M. Turnbull while clearing
the woods on the McNamee property west of the village. In line with the
trail on Hannah's Hill, and southwest of it, were two huge hemlocks that
bore upon their trunks the old wounds of blazes made as if by the axes
of Indians. The blazes were vertical, deeply indented, and the thick
bark had grown outward and around them, forming in each a pocket into
which a man might sink his elbow and forearm. These patriarchal trees of
the forest were about four feet in diameter at the base, and on being
felled showed, by count of the rings, an age of nearly three hundred
years.

[Illustration: COUNCIL ROCK]

When Fenimore Cooper, in _The Deerslayer_, describes Council Rock as a
favorite meeting place of the Indians, where the tribes resorted "to
make their treaties and bury their hatchets," he claims a picturesque
bit of stage setting for his drama, but also records an early
tradition. This rock, sometimes called Otsego Rock, standing forth from
the water where the Susquehanna emerges from the lake, had been a
favorite landmark for the rendezvous of Indians. As one views it now,
from the foot of River Street, it lifts its rounded top not quite so
high above the water as when Cooper described it in 1841. The damming of
the Susquehanna to furnish power for the village water supply has raised
the whole level of Otsego Lake, and gives an artificial fullness to the
first reaches of the long river.

Whether Cooperstown