We returned to Fultonville, from our excursion to Johnstown, by the western road, and passed the premises formerly owned by Sampson Sammons, near the winding Cayadutta. The house, which was built upon the foundation of the one destroyed by the miscreants under Johnson, has a venerable appearance; but the trailing vines that cover its porch, and the air of comfort that surrounds it, hide all indications of the desolation of former times. We arrived at Fultonville in time to dine, and there I spent an hour pleasantly and profitably with Jeptha R. Simms, Esq., the author of a "History of Schoharie County and the Border Wars of New York," a work of much local and general interest, and a valuable companion to Campbell's "Annals of Tryon County." It is greatly to be lamented that men like Campbell and Simms, and Miner, of Wyoming, who gathered a large proportion of the facts concerning the Revolution from the lips of those who participated in its trials, have not been found in every section of our old thirteen states equally industrious and patriotic. It is now too late, for the men of the Revolution are mostly in the grave. I have found but few, very few, still alive and sufficiently vigorous to tell the tales of their experience with perspicuity; and a hundred times, in the course of my pilgrimage to the grounds where
Discord raised its trumpet notes
And carnage beat its horrid drum,
have my inquiries for living patriots of that war been answered with "Five years ago Captain A. was living," or "three years ago Major B. died;" or "last autumn Mother C. was buried;" all of whom were full of the unwritten history of the Revolution. But they are gone, and much of the story of our struggle for independence is buried with them. They are gone, but not forgotten:
"They need
No statue or inscription to reveal
Their greatness. It is round them; and the joy
With which their children tread the hallow'd ground