hundred acres each for every inhabitant. In strict accordance with this plan, which appeared so well on paper, the survey was made, and the "darling Street" was laid out. Yet in the actual survey it crossed many a craggy bluff and steep hillside, that never could be worked, or used for travelling purposes. In a short time many of them moved upon their lands, and commenced their little clearings in the grim old forest. Such is the origin of the modern town of Argyle.

Like the children of Israel wandering with Moses in the desert, seeking Palestine for forty years, these children of the Hebrides, after wandering for twenty-five years in the wilderness, also found their promised land, and their leader, Laughlin Campbell, like Moses, never reached it, but only saw its sunny slopes from some far-off mountain peak.

The city of Oswego sits at the mouth of the river of the same name on the south-eastern shore of Lake Ontario, the 'Beautiful Lake" of the Iroquois, the long silent guns of her protecting fort overlooking its peaceful waters. Her harbor is filled with the teeming commerce of the great lakes, which seeks through her ports an outlet overland to the Atlantic seaboard, and her shipping and railroad interests are among the most important in the land. This is the Oswego of to-day. But her authentic history runs back for more than two hundred years, into the legendary lore of the Oswego, the Indian Swa-geh, of the olden time, the famous lake-port of the populous Iroquois cantons of western New York. The Indians, in all their journeyings through the wilderness, made their trails along the water courses. They threaded the winding streams with their frail bark canoes for hundreds of miles, carrying them on their backs around the numerous falls and rapids. To each end of these carrying places, and to all the points where they reached some large stream or some lake, they gave significant names. Many of these ancient names are still retained, and among them is Os-we-go, the lake port of the Iroquois.

II.

THE WESTERN WAR-TRAIL.

In colonial times, between Albany on the Hudson and the Canadian cities in the valley of the St. Lawrence, there were two great routes of travel over which the old wartrails ran. One of these was the great northern route, running up the Hudson and down the Champlain valley, and the other was the western trail, which ran up the Mohawk valley, through Oneida Lake, and down the Oswego River to Lake Ontario.

The first carrying place on the great western route was from the Hudson at Albany through the pine woods to the Mohawk at Schenectady. This carrying place avoided the Ga-ha-oose Falls. At the terminus of the old Indian carrying place on the Hudson, now called Albany, the Dutch, under Hendrick Christiensen, in 1614, built Fort Nassau on Castle Island. This island was situate on the east side of the river, a little below the city, and after 1630 was known as Patroon's Island. It has long since been joined with the mainland, and lost in the improvements made on that side of the river. In 1617 they built another fort at the mouth of the Normanskill, at the old Indian Ta-wa-sent-ha -"the place of the many dead." In 1623 Fort Orange was built by Adriaen Joris, and eighteen families built their bark huts and spent there the coming winter. In 1630 Kilian van Rensselaer, a rich diamond merchant of Holland, the original patroon, sent over his colonists, the Manor of Rensselaerwyck was founded, and a little fur trading station grew up under the guns of Fort Orange, which has since developed into the modern city of Albany. The Mohawk

name for Albany was Ska-neh-ta-de, meaning "the place beyond the pine openings."

In the year 1662, Arendt van Curler, and other inhabitants of Fort Orange, "went west" across the old carry through the pines to the rich Mohawk flats and founded a settlement. To this settlement they applied the old Indian name of Albany, calling it Schenectady. From Albany it was the new settlement on the Mohawk beyond the pines. The true Indian name for Schenectady was O-no-a-la-gonena, meaning "pained in the head."

From Schenectady the western trail ran up the Mohawk to what is now the city of Rome, where there was another carry of a mile in length, to the Wood Creek which flows into Oneida Lake. This carrying place, afterward the site of Fort Stanwix, was called by the Indians Da-ya-hoo-waquat. From it the old trail ran through the Oneida Lake, and down the Oswego River to Lake Ontario. At the mouth of the Oswego River, on Lake Ontario, was the old Indian village called Swa-geh, the lake-port of the Iroquois.

From Swa-geh westward the navigation was unobstructed for almost a thousand miles through the great lakes to the old Indian Chik-ah-go, (Chicago) which was situate at the eastern end of the trail which led from the great lakes westward to the Indian Me-che-se-pa "the mysterious river, the Father of Waters toward the setting sun."

III.

OSWEGO.

For a period of one hundred and eighty years, from its earliest settlement in 1614 up to the end of the last French war, the chief business of Albany was dealing in furs and peltries with the Indians of the North and West. But the French at Montreal and Quebec at length began to divert the western fur trade, and it became necessary for the merchants of Albany to adopt measures to retain it. So, in 1720, the citizens of Albany pushed boldly out on the old western trail to Swa-geh, on Lake Ontario, and established a fur trading station there upon what the French claimed was their territory. The importance of this measure will be readily seen, for Swa-geh commanded the fur trade of the great West. Swa-geh thus became the lake-port for Albany as well as for the cantons of the Iroquois.

As early as the year 1700 Col. Romer, after making a careful exploration of the country of the Five Nations, mentioned Swa-geh as an important station on Lake Ontario for the prosecution of the fur trade with the Indians of the great West. But it was not until 1721 that Swa-geh was occupied by the English, and not till 1727 that Gov. Burnet built a fort there and it was called Oswego. In a letter to the Board of Trade by Gov. Burnet, dated May 9th, 1727, he says: "I have this spring sent up workmen to build a stone house of strength at a place called Oswego, at the mouth of the Onnondaga River, where our principal trade with the Five Nations is carried on." This building was eighty feet square, and of great strength. In 1744, at the beginning of the French and Indian war of that date, it