appreciated by residents of the village, and now began to be
generally sought by visitors from afar. In summer, the shores of the
lake come to be dotted with the camp-houses and tents of those who
sought relief from the swelter of cities in the cool forests of Otsego,
and found delight in the sailing and fishing for which the Glimmerglass
is famous.

[Illustration: _J. B. Slote_

THE LAKE FROM THE O-TE-SA-GA]

In the summer of 1870 Capt. Daniel B. Boden began regular steam
navigation of Otsego Lake by means of a small steamboat which he had
brought to Cooperstown by railroad, and which had been used as a gunboat
in Southern waters during the Civil War. The boat was renamed the _Mary
Boden_. In the following summer a rival steamboat was launched, much
larger than the former, called the _Natty Bumppo_, and owned principally
by A. H. Watkins and Elihu Phinney. At the beginning of the next season
the conservative folk of the village were scandalized by the _Mary
Boden_, which then commenced to make lake trips on Sunday, a breach of
ancient custom in which the owners of the _Natty Bumppo_ indignantly
declined to compete. On a night early in July there was an alarm of
fire, a great blaze at the lake front, and villagers running to the
scene found that one of the steamboats was in flames and beyond hope of
salvage. A small child at a front window of Edgewater, watching the
fire, clapped her hands, and cried out, "It's the wicker [wicked] boat!
It's the wicker boat!" But it was not the wicked boat that was ablaze.
It was the _Natty Bumppo_, which burned to the water's edge a total
loss, the boat that had never left its dock on Sunday. The event was
long recalled by some in the village as an instance of grave error in
the usually correct dispensations of Providence. The _Natty Bumppo_ was
replaced, in the next season, by a new steamboat bearing the same name.
The new _Natty Bumppo_ and the old _Mary Boden_ were the famous boats of
the lake until they were succeeded by the _Pioneer_ and the _Cyclone_,
and later by the _Deerslayer_, the _Pathfinder_, and the _Mohican_.

Aside from the use of canoes, the first general navigation of the lake
was undertaken in 1794 by a man known as Admiral Hassy, who in his day
was the most celebrated fisherman of Otsego. He had a large flat boat
which he called the ship _Jay_, and upon which he used boards for sails.
This craft was safe, but not speedy.

Some thirty years later a group of ent