[Illustration: MAP OF OTSEGO LAKE] Otsego Lake is chiefly famous as the scene of events in two of Cooper's _Leather-Stocking Tales_. There are glimpses of it in _The Pioneers_, while in _The Deerslayer_ the whole action revolves about this lake, which throughout the story is called the "Glimmerglass." The scenes of incidents in these two tales are still pointed out on Otsego Lake, and have become as much a part of its history as of its romance. [Illustration: THE SUSQUEHANNA, near its source] To begin with points described in _The Deerslayer_, the beehive-shaped rock where the youthful Leather-Stocking had his rendezvous with Chingachgook is that now known as Council Rock, and still juts above the water at the outlet of the lake, near the western shore of the Susquehanna's source. Here it was that exactly at sunset, to keep his appointment with Leather-Stocking, the tall, handsome, and athletic young Delaware Indian suddenly appeared in full war-paint, standing upon the rock, having escaped his lurking foes. Not far from this point, at a short distance down the river, Deerslayer got his first glimpse of the beautiful Judith Hutter, as she peered from the window of the "ark," which had been moored beneath the screening foliage of overhanging trees. It was through these waters, and through the outlet, soon afterward, that Floating Tom Hutter and Hurry Harry, aided by Deerslayer, drew the ark back into the lake in the nick of time to escape a band of hostile Iroquois. On the western side of the lake, just beyond the O-te-sa-ga as one travels northward, the first little bay that indents the shore, now called Blackbird Bay, and somewhat changed in shape and aspect by fillings of soil and other improvements at the Country Club, is the "Rat's Cove," where Floating Tom Hutter was fond of keeping his ark anchored behind the trees that covered the narrow strip of jutting land. Here it was, at the beginning of the story, that Deerslayer and Hurry Harry sought Tom in vain, and on this margin of the lake the buck appeared at which Hurry took the shot that awakened the echoes of the Glimmerglass. Adjacent to this bay, in the midst of the stretch of land between the O-te-sa-ga and the Country Club house, was the Huron camp in which Hutter and Hurry were captured by the redskins; and the quantities of arrowheads found here in later times suggest that it actually was a favorite place of Indian encampment. North of Blackbird Bay and the Country Club, and beyond Fenimore Farm, are Glimmerglen Cove and Brookwood Point, where charming residences that overlook the lake add their own attractions to the names of "Glimmerglen" and "Brookwood," by which they are known. The stream that gushes into the lake from Brookwood is the one in which Hetty Hutter made her ablutions, and from which she drank, while on her lonely way southward to the Huron camp, in her simple-minded scheme for the rescue of her father and Hurry Harry.