Despite his many cares, Johnson enjoyed reading and the study of science. He ordered books and periodical literature regularly from London. His scientific taste was especially strong in astronomy. To the glorious canopy of stars, which on winter nights make the mountain-walled valley a roofed palace of celestial wonders, Johnson’s eyes were directed whenever fair weather made their splendours visible. In autumn the brilliant tints of the sumach, dogwood, swamp-maple, sassafras, red and white oak, and the various trees of the order of _Sapindaceæ_ filled the hills and lowlands with a glory never seen in Europe. His botanical tastes could be enjoyably cultivated, for in orchids, ferns, flowering plants, and wonders of the vegetable world, few parts of North America are richer than the Mohawk Valley. ----- [2] The young and charming Lord James Radcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater, the idol of the Jacobites, was beheaded 24th of February, 1716; that is, on the very day, it is claimed by Col. T. Bailey Myers, that Sir William Johnson was born, and the wild fervour of a Jacobite loyalty was still alive when Sir John was a boy.—DE PEYSTER’S _Life of Gen. John Johnson_, Introd., p. xvi. [3] Mr. E. F. De Lancey, the well-known writer on American history and genealogy, knew personally the grandchildren of Sir William Johnson, and has embodied valuable information about him and them in his notes to Jones’s “History of New York during the Revolutionary War.” In his letter to the writer, dated March 28, 1891, he kindly sent a transcript from a letter in Mrs. Bowes’s own handwriting—“Information my father gave me when with him. Catharine Wisenberg, a native of Germany, married to Sir W. Johnson, Bart. in the U. States of America, died in 1759.” Mrs. Bowes was a daughter of Sir John Johnson, who was a son of Sir William Johnson. It is probable that the spelling Wisenberg is only the phonetic form of Weissenburg. The local gossip and groundless traditions, like those set down by J. R. Simms, are in all probability worthless. CHAPTER III. THE SIX NATIONS AND THE LONG HOUSE. THE military nerves of the continent of North America lie in the water-ways bounding, traversing, or issuing from the State of New York. Its heart is the region between the Hudson and the Niagara. In these days of steam-traction, when transit is made at right angles to the rivers, and thus directly across the great natural channels of transportation, New York may be less the Empire State than in the days of canoes and bateaux. Yet even now its strategic importance is at once apparent. In the old days of conflict, first between the forces of Latin and Teutonic civilization, and later between British king-craft and American democracy, it was the ground chosen for struggle and decision.