We are coming to the headwaters of the Delaware. At Hancock, elevated about nine hundred feet above tide, the Delaware divides. The Popacton, or east branch, comes in, the Mohock, or western branch, however, being the larger stream, and making the boundary between Pennsylvania and New York above their junction. These two branches, after flowing nearly parallel for a long distance across Delaware County, New York, separated by a broad mountain ridge about eleven miles wide, unite around the base of a great dome-like hill at Hancock, the spot having been appropriately named by the Indians Sho-ka-kin, or "where the waters meet." Thirteen miles above is Deposit, at the New York boundary, where Oquaga Creek comes down from the mountains to the westward. This was formerly an important "place of deposit" for lumber, awaiting the spring freshets to be sent down the Delaware, and hence its name. High hills surround Deposit, the river makes a grand sweeping bend, and nearby is the beautiful mountain lake of Oquaga, of which Taylor writes: "If there is a more restful place than this, outside 'God's acres,' I have failed to find it;" adding, "The mountain road to the lake is picturesque enough to lead to Paradise." The headwaters of the Delaware rise upon the western slopes of the Catskill Mountains in Delaware and Schoharie Counties, New York. The source is about two hundred and seventy miles almost directly north of Philadelphia. In a depression on the western slope of the Catskill range, at an elevation of eighteen hundred and eighty-eight feet above tidewater, is the head of the Delaware, Lake Utsyanthia, a secluded little sheet of the purest and most transparent spring water. It is also called Ote-se-on-teo, meaning the "beautiful spring, cold and pure." It is a mirror of beauty in a wooded wilderness, its surroundings being most wild and picturesque. From this little lakelet flows out the Mohock, winding down its romantic valley, and receiving many brooks and rills, passing a village or two, and bubbling along for forty miles to Deposit, and thence onward as the great river Delaware to the ocean. Thus Tennyson sings of the Brook:
"I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For man may come, and man may go,
But I go on forever."