the drowning of his little daughter Jane, aged six years, near Half Moon, now Waterford, on the 10th of May, 1776. With his mother and brothers, his wife and family, he was going up the river in batteaux, on his way from Albany to his manor on the Boquet. The batteau in which his daughter was sitting was carelessly run upon a fallen tree top that lay extended from the bank into the stream, and capsized. Her body was found the next day near the spot where she fell into the water, and was buried on the shore of the river in the burial place of a Mr. Coleman at Stillwater, not far from the battle ground made famous the year after, called Bemis Heights.

Some of Gilliland's numerous descendants still own and occupy parts of his patrimonial estate in Northern New York, while others are scattered in various parts of the United States and Canada, all occupying the highest social positions. Elizabethtown, the shire-town of Essex county, was named in honor of his accomplished wife. And now the old seigneuries and the Manor of Willsboro on Lake Champlain, like Tryon county, and like the ancient La Famine on Lake Ontario, have long been forgotten.

The little mountain hamlet of North Elba, now of worldwide fame, was for ten years the forest home of John Brown of Ossawottamie memory. It is situated in the township of the same name, on the western border of Essex county, in the very heart of the Great Wilderness, It is about forty miles west of Lake Champlain, and seven miles north of the Indian Pass. It is surrounded on all sides save its western by an ampitheatre of mountain ranges. To the westward it stretches off into the great wilderness plateau that lies beyond, filled to the brim with gleaming lakes, towering mountain peaks, and numberless wild meadows. At different points near this wild hamlet, the forms of the giant mountains which surround it, their gorges and landslides, are brought clearly into view, as they tower in their sublime and awful grandeur above an unseen world of woods and waters.

II.

AN INDIAN VILLAGE.

North Elba has had a checkered history. Before and during the colonial period it was the summer home of the Adirondack hunting bands. In all the old maps an Indian

village is located near the spot. According to a tradition still lingering in this region, the bold partizan Capt. Robert Rogers, with his rangers, once attacked and destroyed this Indian village in the absence of the warriors. Upon their return, the infuriated braves pursued him, and gave him battle when he reached, upon his retreat, the banks of the Boquet River.

There was also another Indian village not far away, near the Indian carry between the waters of the Saranac and the Raquette. The remains of this last-named village, with its burying ground, may still be traced.

III.

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM.

About the beginning of the present century, a little band of pioneer settlers strayed off into this secluded valley, made small clearings, and built their rude cabins. These pioneers, being separated from the outer world by impassible mountain barriers, except by a long and circuitous trail up the valley of the Au Sable, subsisted mostly by hunting and fishing. In time they became almost as wild as the Indians that preceded them in the occupancy of their forest home. The place was then known as the "Plains of Abraham."

At length in the year 1810, Archibald McIntyre, of Albany, and his associates founded the North Elba iron works, on the Au Sable, near the Plains of Abraham, and broke in with their new industry upon the seclusion of these pioneers. New life was thus infused into this little half-wild community. But McIntyre's enterprise was finally abandon

ed about the year 1826, and nothing soon remained of it but a few decaying buildings and broken water-wheels. At length, in that year the old Indian Sabelle led David Henderson, the son-in-law and associate of McIntyre, from the abandoned works at North Elba, through the Indian Pass to the iron dam on the Hudson. The Adirondack Iron Works springing up in consequence of this discovery, cast another gleam of ruddy light across the mountain shadows of the Plains of Abraham.

Then, with the decay of the Adirondack village, new and strange characters appeared upon the scene. The careless pioneer settlers of the Plains of Abraham had squatted upon their lands, and had never acquired the title to them from the state. About the year 1840, a land speculator swooped down upon their possessions, and they were in their turn, like the Indians, driven from their homes. It was about this time that Gerrit Smith bought the Plains of Abraham, with miles of the land contiguous to them, and made his attempt to colonize the grim old northern wilderness with the free colored people of the state. He made to each family a gift of forty acres of land on condition of settlement. He hoped thereby to found in that secluded spot, among their own people, a secure asylum for the many fugitive slaves who were then fleeing toward Canada from the southern plantations.

IV.

JOHN BROWN OF OSSA WOTTAMIE.

In the year 1849, Smith deeded to John Brown, as a free gift, a farm of three hundred and fifty acres, situate on the western slope of the valley of the Au Sable, at North Elba,

and he at once became the leading spirit in the enterprise. John Brown had but just before made a journey to Europe. While there he admired the superb stock upon the English estates, and his martial spirit was aroused by the splendid equipments and elaborate evolutions of the vast armies of continental Europe. He moved his family of stalwart sons into his forest home, and with the aid of his colored brethren he cleared his fields. He stocked his mountain pastures with imported British cattle, and under his management the little hamlet among the mountains, for a while,

seemed to prosper. But the mutterings of the "irrepressi

His

ble conflict" reached him in his secluded retreat. spirit was as turbulent and wild as the torrents that dashed around his home. His stormy soul was filled with prophetic visions of the vast armies that were destined then so soon to march on throughout the length and breadth of our land to their fratricidal struggle. When the troubles about slavery broke out in Kansas they at once attracted his attention, and, with his sons, he hastened into the thickest of the fight. Conspicuous in almost every contest therein, his name is intimately associated with this stormy period in our country's annals.

While engaged in this anti-slavery controversy, for ten years he was seldom seen at his home in North Elba, but he made it his head-quarters, and paid it an occasional visit, until, in the year 1859, his life was ended upon the scaffold, in Virginia, in consequence of his insane attempt to liberate the southern slaves by force of arms, an act which seemed to precipitate the Great Rebellion. After his death, his body was brought by the remaining members