How much they seemed to enjoy that life which was so new to them! for they were the young broods first led forth to sport upon the waters. While the fixed attitude and lofty port of the large birds of prey, who were ranged upon the sandy shelf, formed an inverted picture in the same clear mirror, and were a pleasing contrast to the playful multitude around. These they never attempted to disturb, well aware of the facility of escape which their old retreats afforded them. Such of my readers as have had patience to follow me to this favourite isle, will be, ere now, as much bewildered, as I have often been myself on its luxuriant shores. To return to the southward, on the confines of what might then be called an interminable wild, rose two gently sloping eminences, about half a mile from the shore; from each of these a large brook descended, bending through the plain, and having their course marked by the shades of primeval trees and shrubs, left there to shelter the cattle when the ground was cleared. On these eminences, in the near neighbourhood, and in full view of the mansion at the Flats, were two large and well-built dwellings, inhabited by Colonel Schuyler’s two younger sons, Peter and Jeremiah. To the eldest was allotted the place inhabited by his father, which, from its lower situation and level surface, was called the Flats. There was a custom prevalent among the new settlers, something like that of gavelkind; they made a pretty equal division of lands among their younger sons; the eldest, by pre-eminence of birth, had a larger share, and generally succeeded to the domain inhabited by his father, with the slaves, cattle, and effects upon it. This, in the present instance, was the lot of the eldest son of that family whose possessions I have been describing. His portion of land on the shore of the river, was scarcely equal in value to those of his brothers, to whose possessions, the brooks I have mentioned, formed a natural boundary, dividing them from each other, and from his. To him was allotted the costly furniture of the family, of which paintings, plate, and china constituted the valuable part, every thing else being merely plain and useful. They had also a large house in Albany, which they occupied occasionally. I have neglected to describe, in its right place, the termination or back ground of the landscape I have such delight in recollecting. There the solemn and interminable forest was varied here and there by rising grounds, near streams where birch and hickory, maple and poplar, cheered the eye with a lighter green, through the prevailing shade of dusky pines. On the border of the wood, where the trees had been thinned for firing, was a broad shrubbery all along, which marked the edges of the wood, above the possessions of the brothers, as far as it extended.