eing the whole basin, often fringed with pines, would
throw back the hills that hung over it," they "got to calling the place
the 'Glimmerglass.'" At Gravelly Point opposite, Deerslayer killed his
first Indian, and above are the tree-tops where rose the star that timed
Hist's meeting with her lover. Some distance to the north is the
spot--now known as the "Sunken Islands"--which marks the site of Muskrat
Castle, and is near the last resting-place of Hetty Hutter and her
mother. And far to the southwest lies a long, low, curving beach jutting
sickle-shape into the lake. As a favored haunt of muskrats, it was once
called Muskrat Cove, and now Blackbird Bay. Just beyond lies Fenimore,
the home of Cooper's early married life.

In the author's pages on England, published in 1837, was expressed a
wish to write a story on "the teeming and glorious naval history of that
land." Our own country at that time had no fleet, but Cooper's interest
in his youthful profession made quite fitting to himself the words of
his old shipmate, Ned Myers: "I can say conscientiously that if my life
were to be passed over again it would he passed in the navy--God bless
the flag!" Out of England's long naval records Cooper made "The Two
Admirals," an old-time, attractive story of the evolution of fleets, and
the warm friendship between two strong-hearted men in a navy full of
such, and at a time before the days of steam. "Cooper's ships live," so
says Captain Mahan; and continues: "They are handled as ships then were,
and act as ships still would act under the circumstances." This naval
historian thought "the water a noble field for the story-teller." "The
Two Admirals" first appeared in _Graham's Magazine,_ for which Cooper
was regularly engaged to write in 1842. On June 16 of this year a
decision was rendered in the "Naval History" dispute. One of the
questions was whether Cooper's account of the battle of Lake Erie was
accurate and fair and did justice to the officers in command, and
whether he was right in asserting that Elliott, second in command, whom
Perry at first warmly commended and later preferred charges against, did
his duty in that action. Cooper maintained that while Perry's victory in
1813 had won for himself, "as all the world knows, deathless glory,"
injustice had been done to Elliott. Three arbitrators chosen by the
parties to the dispute decided that Cooper had fulfilled his duty as an
historian; that "the narrative of his battle