r with God than in favor with man," and quotes that
warning text of Scripture: "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed
lest he fall!" and adds, "we have endeavored to imitate the simplicity
of Captain Woolston in writing this book." The story of "a ship-wrecked
mariner, cast away on a reef not laid down on any chart." This barren
spot the castaway makes to bloom as a rose, then brings immigrants to
his Pacific Eden, which finally vanishes like a dream. The work is said
to be an excellent study of the author's own character.

Full of spirit and vigor at fifty-eight, Mr. Cooper in June, 1847, made
a pleasant few weeks' visit to the middle west, going as far as Detroit.
The country beyond Seneca Lake--the prairies and fine open groves of
Michigan--was new to him. Affluent towns with well-tilled lands between,
full of mid-summer promise, where forty years before he had crossed a
wilderness, gave added interest to the entire way. He was far more
deeply impressed with sublime Niagara than in his earlier years and
before he had seen all the falls of Europe. The idea of weaving its
majesty into an Indian story came to him, but, alas! was never written.

[Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS.]

He was pleased with the growth and promise of Buffalo and Detroit, was
charmed with "the beautiful flowery prairies and natural groves of
Michigan," and wrote of them: "To get an idea of Prairie Round,--imagine
an oval plain of some thirty-thousand acres, of surprising fertility,
without an eminence; a few small cavities, however, are springs of water
the cattle will drink." In the prairie's center was a forest island of
some six hundred acres "of the noblest native trees," and in the heart
of this wood was a small round lake a quarter of a mile across. Into
this scene Cooper called some creatures of his fancy; among them a
bee-hunter, suggested by the following incident.

One morning not long after his return from Europe he was passing, as
usual, his leisure hours at the mountain farm. While overlooking his
workmen he espied a small skiff leaving an opposite shore-point of the
lake and making directly for his own landing. Mr. Cooper thought the
boatman was on an errand to himself. Presently the stranger, tin pail in
hand, made his appearance and inquired of Cooper and his men whether a
large swarm of bees had been seen "somewhere there-abouts." He had lost
a fine swarm early in the morning several days before, and had since
looked in vai