James Fenimore Cooper located around Glen's Falls the scene of his novel, the _Last of the Mohicans_, in which _Hawkeye_, looking out of the cavern in the ravine, gives his admirable description of the cataract as it appeared in the French and Indian War, before the millwright had come along to disturb the scenery. "Ay," he said, "there are the falls on two sides of us, and the river above and below. If you had daylight it would be worth the trouble to step up on the height of this rock and look at the perversity of the water. It falls by no rule at all; sometimes it leaps, sometimes it tumbles; there it skips; here it shoots; in one place 'tis as white as snow, and in another 'tis as green as grass; hereabouts it pitches into deep hollows that rumble and quake the 'arth, and thereaway it ripples and sings like a brook, fashioning whirlpools and gullies in the old stone as if 'twere no harder than trodden clay. The whole design of the river seems disconnected. First it runs smoothly as if meaning to go down the descent as things were ordered; then it angles about and faces the shores; nor are there places wanting where it looks backward, as if unwilling to leave the wilderness to mingle with the salt!" SOURCES OF THE HUDSON. The noble Hudson River, which we have ascended to Glen's Falls, flows out of the great Adirondack wilderness of Northern New York, the headwaters draining its extensive southern declivity. Among these virgin Adirondack woods and mountains, near the Long Lake, is the remote source of the western branch of the Hudson, the "Hendrick Spring." Surrounded by forest and swamp, this cool and shallow pool, about five feet in diameter, fringed by delicate ferns, and overhung with vines and shrubbery, is the beginning of the great river, and named in honor of its discoverer and first explorer: "Far up in the dim mountain glade, Wrapped in the myst'ry of its shade, On a cold rock, a dewdrop fell, And slumbered in its stony shell, Till brewed within its rocky bed, There trickled out a silver thread, A little, shy, lost waterling, That marks the cradled mountain spring." The Hendrick Spring is within a half-mile of Long Lake and upon the same summit, the latter discharging its waters northward into the St. Lawrence. The little stream from this source gathers force, and flows through a chain of brooks and ponds to the lovely Catlin Lake. High peaks environ them, and their swelling waters make much of the river on coming to the confluence with the northern branch of the Hudson at the outlet of Harris Lake. Here there blooms, all about, the splendid cardinal plant, its showy flower glowing like a flame.