erprising individuals built a
horse-boat as a means of transporting lake parties. The boat had at each
end a high cabin topped by a platform. These excrescences caught
whatever breeze was blowing, and made the craft unmanageable. The
struggles of the two poor horses who were expected to propel the boat
were not equal to a gale of Pierstown trade-winds. More than once a lake
party starting for Three-Mile Point, aboard this vessel, found itself
stranded on the opposite shore.

During the first half of the century a "general lake party" in the
summer corresponded to the "select ball" of each winter as constituting
one of the two great social events of the year in Cooperstown. It ought
to be said that the term "lake party" had a distinct social
significance, and the word "picnic," which came later to be used to
describe the same thing, meant to the elder inhabitants an affair that
had quite lost the flavor of the older custom, and the use of the word
was regarded as one of the signs of social decadence.

The means of navigation most often used by the lake parties was a huge
scow propelled by long oars. A typical lake party was given in July of
1840, when Governor Seward visited Cooperstown. On the way home upon the
lake the old scow, according to custom, was stopped opposite to the
Echo, and several persons tried their voices to show off the wonderfully
clear reverberations that would be flung back from the eastern hillside.
But the master of this art was "Joe Tom," the negro who had been chief
cook of the lake party, and was now at one of the long oars of the scow.
On being asked to awaken the famous echo, Joe Tom shouted, "Hurrah for
Governor Steward!" and when the echo came back, "You've got it to a 't,'
Joe!" exclaimed Governor Seward.

At this period the authority in aquatic affairs, and the most renowned
fisherman of the lake, was Commodore Boden. Miss Cooper says of her
father's novel _Home as Found_ that the one character in it "avowedly
and minutely drawn from life" was that of the Commodore, "a figure long
familiar to those living on the lake shores--a venerable figure, tall
and upright, to be seen for some three score years moving to and fro
over the water, trolling for pickerel or angling for perch, almost any
day in the year, excepting when the waters were icebound in
winter."[120] The commodore was of quite imposing appearance, handsome
alike in form and figure, straight as an arrow, and lithe as an Indian,