population. Here, during the official term of Gen. Hamilton, whose name
the village bears, the capitalists of Albany planted a manufacturing
village. The position is one where the arable forest and farming lands
are bounded by the half arabic waste of the pine plains of the
Honicroisa, whose deep gorges are still infested by the wolf and smaller
animals. The whole valley of the Norman's Kill abounds in lovely and
rural scenes, and quiet retreats and waterfalls, which are suited to
nourish poetic tastes. In these he indulged from his thirteenth year,
periodically writing, and as judgment ripened, destroying volumes of
manuscripts, while at the same time he evinced uncommon diligence at his
books and studies. The poetic talent was, indeed, strongly developed.
His power of versification was early and well formed, and the pieces
which were published anonymously at a maturer period, as "Geehale," and
"The Iroquois," &c., have long been embodied without a name in our
poetic literature. But this faculty, of which we have been permitted to
see the manuscript of some elaborate and vigorous trains of thought, did
not impede a decided intellectual progress in sterner studies in the
sciences and arts. His mind was early imbued with a thirst of knowledge,
and he made such proficiency as to attract the notice of persons of
education and taste. There was developed, too, in him, an early bias
for the philosophy of language. Mr. Van Kleeck, a townsman, in a recent
letter to Dr. R.W. Griswold, says:--

"I revert with great pleasure to the scenes of my residence, in the part
of Albany County which was also the residence of Henry R. Schoolcraft. I
went to reside at the village of Hamilton, in the town of Guilderland,
in 1803. Col. Lawrence Schoolcraft, the father of Henry, had then the
direction of the large manufactories of glass, for which that place was
long noted. The standing of young Henry, I remember, at his school, for
scholarship, was then very noted, and his reputation in the village most