Lake Champlain was long known to the Dutch, and through them to the English, as the Lake of Corlaer. It seems that one Corlaer was for a long time the great man of a little Dutch settlement on the Mohawk, where for many years he swayed the civic sword so potently and with such terror to evil-doers among the Indians, that they adopted his name into their language to signify a white governor. This doughty Dutchman, therefore, left the title to his successors, and the Corlaers went through their decline and fall with as much dignity, in a small way, as history ascribes to the Pharaohs and the Cæsars. Like the founders of other dynasties, however, the original Van Corlaer came to a remarkable and tragic end; and as this deplorable event took place on the Lake, now known by the name of Champlain, the Dutch stubbornly regarded their own hero as having the best right to name it. For a time it seemed likely that fortune would decide for the Dutch; but, with a fickleness for which the flirt is proverbial, she suddenly declared for the French claim; and time having ratified the award, the name of Corlaer is no more heard among mortals, except when some one of antiquarian tastes, like myself, discovers, with a meditative sigh, that it once could start a ghost as soon as Cæsar, and come very near being “writ in water,” which, strange to say, would have rendered it immortal. It seems that in those days there was, somewhere in the lake, a remarkable rock which the Mohawks regarded as the dome of a submarine palace, in which dwelt with his mermaids a wicked old Indian enchanter, who ruled over Boreas and Euroclydon. The superstition was quite coincident in its particulars with the more classical and familiar one which is served up in the story of Æneas: but this mischievous king of the winds had the merit of being easily propitiated; and the Indians, as they timidly passed his stronghold, never failed to send down to him the tributary peace offering of a pipe, an arrow, or any thing else, save their bottles of fire-water, of which the old fellow was dexterously cheated. The doughty Van Corlaer, undertaking a voyage to the north, was duly informed of these facts; but he swore “by stone and bone” that he would not pay the tribute, or ask any one’s permission to navigate the lake. I am sorry to add that he would not be argued out of his rash and inconsiderate vow. Tradition relates that, as he approached the rock, his mariners showed signs of fear, which appeared so puerile and idle to the enlarged soul of the hero, that he on the contrary steered close to the fearful citadel, and, shamefully exposing his person, made an unseemly gesture towards the abode of the Indian Æolus, and added some Dutch formula of defiance. It is almost needless to relate that the wrath of his ventose majesty was greatly excited. He scorned, indeed, to make a tempest about it; but despatching several angry little squalls