The charm of Cooper's genius and the magic of his description have given Otsego Lake a world-wide fame. In one place he described it as "a broad sheet of water, so placid and limpid that it resembled a bed of the pure mountain atmosphere compressed into a setting of hills and woods. Nothing is wanted but ruined castles and recollections, to raise it to the level of the scenery of the Rhine." And thus has the poet sung of it: "O Haunted Lake, from out whose silver fountains The mighty Susquehanna takes its rise; O Haunted Lake, among the pine-clad mountains, Forever smiling upward to the skies,-- A master's hand hath painted all thy beauties; A master's mind hath peopled all thy shore With wraiths of mighty hunters and fair maidens, Haunting thy forest-glades forevermore." All around Otsego Lake and its neighborhood are the scenes which Cooper has interwoven into his novel, _The Deer-Slayer_. About seven miles northwest are the well-known Richfield Springs (magnesia and sulphur), near Candarago Lake. This Indian name, meaning "on the lake," has recently been revived to supersede the old title of Schuyler's Lake for this beautiful sheet of water, enbosomed in green and sloping hills, which is the chief scenic charm of Richfield. To the eastward from Otsego Lake is the romantic Cherry Valley, another attractive summer resort, and the scene of a sad Indian massacre in 1778, the site of the old fort that was then captured being still exhibited, with the graves of the murdered villagers, to whom a monument has been erected. A few miles farther, in a narrow upland wooded valley surrounded by high hills, are the Sharon Springs (sulphur and chalybeate), which in earlier times were so popular with our German citizens, who were attracted by the resemblance to the Fatherland, that the place was called the "Baden-Baden of America." The name of Sharon came from Sharon in Connecticut, and the spring water is discharged with a crust of white and flocculent sulphur into a stream not inappropriately called the Brimstone Brook. In this valley, east of the springs, one of the last Revolutionary battles was fought, Colonel Willett's American force in 1781 routing a detachment of Tories and Indians with severe loss. There are grottoes in the neighborhood abounding in stalactites and beautiful crystals of sulphate of lime. Not far away is the noted Howe's Cave, an immense cavern, said to extend for eleven miles underground, being an old water-channel in the lower Helderberg limestone, and which has many visitors, attracted by its fine display of stalactites and grand rock chambers, with the usual subterranean lake and stream. All this region was originally settled by Germans from the Palatinate.