Go with Mr. Goodwin to visit Oswaco lake—Gov. Throop’s place—Old
Dutch Church overlooking the lake, &c.
_Fort-Hill._—Extensive vestiges of an elliptical work—Curious
rectangular fissures of the limestone rock on the Owasco outlet—north
and south.
The Indian name of the place, as told by an Onondaga chief—Osco; first
called Hardenburgh’s Corners, finally named after Goldsmith’s “Deserted
Village”—so that the poet may be said to have had a hand in supplying
names for a land to which he once purposed to migrate.
It would have pleased “poor Goldsmith” could he have known that he was
the parent of the name for so fine a town—a town thriving somewhat on
the principle laid down in the concluding lines of the poem—
“While self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky.”