Westward from Syracuse the country is full of lakes. Otisco Lake,--the "Bitter-nut Hickory,"--is an oval four miles long, embosomed in hills. To the northwest of Otisco is Skaneateles Lake--the "Long Water"--the most picturesque of all, set among most imposing hills, which, notwithstanding the lake is elevated eight hundred and sixty feet, still rise twelve hundred feet above its surface, giving the waters the deeply blue tinge of an Italian scene. This lovely lake is sixteen miles long, and in no place more than a mile and a half wide, its outlet having a fine cataract. To the westward is Owasco Lake--"the bridge on the water floating"--eleven miles long and a mile wide, walled in by rocky bluffs, yet having its shores diversified by meadows and farm land. About two miles northward, on its outlet, is the busy manufacturing city of Auburn, with thirty thousand people, which was the home of William H. Seward, Governor and Senator from New York, who was President Lincoln's Secretary of State during the Civil War. Its most extensive establishment is the Auburn Prison, covering about eighteen acres, enclosed by walls four feet thick and twelve to thirty-five feet high, there being imprisoned usually about twelve hundred convicts. The surface of the city is varied by hills, making handsome villa sites, and the Owasco Lake outlet flows down a series of rapids, falling one hundred and sixty feet, and utilized by no less than nine dams to turn the wheels of many mills. Captain Hardenburgh was the first settler here in 1793, the original name being "Hardenburgh's Corners." On Fort Hill, one of the highest elevations, the top of which is supposed to be an eminence originally raised by the ancient Mound-Builders, and was an Iroquois fortification, is the Cemetery where are interred the remains of William H. Seward, who died in 1872.