The forests on the shores of Lake George were formerly stocked plentifully with deer, who were hunted in rather a peculiar manner. The huntsmen were divided into two parties, one of which started them from their thickets on the edge of the lake. Upon hearing the approach of the dogs, they invariably took to the water and crossed to the opposite shore, from which a boat, directed by a boy stationed in a high tree, put out to meet them. A few blows with an oar conquered them easily, and they were towed ashore, or taken alive into the boat. Bears are hunted in the same manner, except that, being more inconvenient to close with, they are usually shot from the boat without ceremony. The race of settlers who were to be found in these neighbourhoods not many years ago—half hunters, half farmers—has disappeared, or gone westward with the game. The celebrated theologian, Dr. Dwight, gives a graphic account of one of this class, whom he met in a first visit to Lake George, somewhere about the year 1800. Landing on a point to dine, in his passage up the lake, he found a huntsman, with a buck lying beside him. “Before our departure,” he says, “we heard the hounds advancing near to us. Our new companion instantly took fire at the sound. His eye kindled; his voice assumed a loftier tone; his stride became haughty; his style swelled into pomp, and his sentiments were changed rapidly from mildness to ardour, to vehemence, and to rage. I was forcibly struck with the sameness of the emotions produced by hunting and by war. The ardour of battle, the glitter of arms, and the shock of conflict, could scarcely have produced in a single moment more violent or fierce agitations than were roused in this man by the approach of the hounds, the confident expectation of a victim, and the brilliant prospect of a venatory triumph. To him who has been a witness of both objects, it will cease to be a wonder that the savage should make the chase a substitute for war, and a source of glory second only to that acquired in battle. Our hunter was not exempted, however, from the common lot of man. His partner came up with the hounds, but without a deer! The magnificence of our companion dwindled in a moment. The fire vanished from his eye; his voice fell to its natural key; and the hero shrank into a plain farmer.” No one, it has been well said, understands the character of the aboriginal tenants of America, who has seen them only as _vitiated_ by contact with the settlers. I say vitiated; for, if they are not made better by proper protection and cultivation, they become much worse; as human nature, left to itself, is more susceptible of the contagion of vice, than of improvement in virtue. The Indian, thrown into temptation, easily takes the vices of the white man; and, in such exposure, his race melts away like the snow before a summer’s sun.