Stillwater, and the northern lakes; a little, simple avenue of morello cherry trees, inclosed with a white rail, led to the road and river, not three hundred yards distant. Adjoining to this, on the south side, was an inclosure, subdivided into three parts, of which the first was a small hay field, opposite the south end of the house; the next, not so long, a garden; and the third, by far the largest, an orchard. These were surrounded by simple deal fences. Now let not the genius that presides over pleasure-grounds, nor any of his elegant votaries, revolt with disgust, while I mention the unseemly ornaments which were exhibited on the stakes to which the deals of these same fences were bound. Truly they consisted of the skeleton heads of horses and cattle in as great numbers as could be procured, stuck upon the aforesaid poles. The jaws are fixed on the pole, and the skull uppermost. The wren, on seeing a skull thus placed, never fails to enter by the orifice, which is too small to admit the hand of an infant, lines the pericranium with small twigs and horse-hair, and there lays her eggs in full security. It is very amusing to see the little creatures carelessly go out and in at this aperture, though you should be standing immediately beside it. Not satisfied with providing these singular asylums for their feathered friends, the negroes never fail to make a small, round hole in the crown of every old hat they can lay their hands on, and nail it to the end of the kitchen, for the same purpose. You often see in such a one, at once, thirty or forty of these odd little domicils, with the inhabitants busily going out and in. Besides all these salutary provisions for the domestic comfort of the birds, there was, in clearing the way for their first establishment, a tree always left in the middle of the back yard, for their sole emolument; this tree being purposely pollarded at midsummer, when all the branches were full of sap. Wherever there had been a branch, the decay of the inside produced a hole, and every hole was the habitation of a bird. These were of various kinds, some of which had a pleasing note, but, on the whole, their songsters are far inferior to ours. I rather dwell on these minutiæ, as they not only mark the peculiarities of the country, but convey very truly the image of a people, not too refined for happiness, which, in the process of elegant luxury, is apt to die of disgust. ------- CHAP. XVIII. Description of Colonel Schuyler’s barn—the common, and its various uses.