Its location is on one of the beautiful and sparkling affluents of the Towasentha or Norman’s Kill, popularly called the Hongerkill, which he has in one of his occasional publications called the Iosco, from an aboriginal term.  That picturesque and lofty arm of the Catskills, which is called the Helderberg, bounds the landscape on the west and south, while the Pine Plains occupy the form of a crescent, between the Mohawk and the Hudson, bearing the cities of Albany and Schenectady respectively on its opposite edges.  Across this crescent-like Plain of Pines, by a line of sixteen miles, was the ancient Iroquois war and trading path.  The Towasentha lies on the south borders of this plain, and was, on the first settlement of the country, the seat of an Indian 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 prominent.  He was spoken of as a lad of great promise, and a very learned boy at twelve.  Mr. Robert Buchanan, a Scotchman, and a man of learning, took much pride in his advances, and finally came to