It was about noon on the 12th of May when we alighted shivering from the railcar at Saratoga. We hastened to the Adelphi, and there found the author of Major Jack Downing's Letters and two other gentlemen reading the newspapers round a stove. We had but little time to spare; and, as soon as we had warmed ourselves and ascertained the dinner hour, we set forth to view the place and taste the Congress water. There is nothing to be seen but large white frame houses, with handsome piazzas, festooned with creepers (at this time only the sapless remains of the garlands of the last season). These houses and the wooden temple over the principal spring are all that is to be seen, at least by the bodily eye. The imagination may amuse itself with conjuring up the place as it was less than half a century ago, when these springs bubbled up amid the brush of the forest, their qualities being discovered by the path through the woods worn by the deer in their resort to it. In those days the only edifices were a single loghut and a bearpound; a space enclosed with four high walls, with an extremely narrow entrance, where it was hoped that bears might get in during the dark hours, and be unable to find their way out again. Times are much changed now. There are no bears at Saratoga but a two-legged species from Europe, dropping in, one or two in a season, among the gentry at the Springs.
The process of bottling the Congress water was in full activity when we took our first draught of it. Though the utmost celerity is used, the water loses much of its virtue and briskness by bottling. The man and boy whom we saw filling and corking the bottles with a dexterity which only practice can give, are able to despatch a hundred dozen per day. There are several other springs, shedding waters of various medicinal virtues; but the Congress fountain is the only one from which the stranger would drink as a matter of taste.
The waterworks are just at hand, looking like a giant's shower-bath. At the top of the eminence close by there is a pleasure railroad; a circular track, on which elderly children may take a ride round and round in a self-moving chair; an amusement a step above the old merry-go-round in gravity and scientific pretension. But for its vicinity to some tracts of beautiful scenery, Saratoga must be a very dull place to persons shaken out of their domestic habits, and deprived of their usual occupations; and the beauties of the scenery must be sought, Saratoga Lake lying three miles, Glen's Falls eighteen, and Lake George twenty-seven miles from the Springs.
At dinner Mr. R., the gentleman of our party, announced to us that he had been able to engage a pretty double gig, with a pair of brisk ponies, for ourselves, and a light cart for our luggage. The day was very cold for an open carriage; but it was not improbable that, before twenty-four hours were over, we might be panting with heat; and it was well to be provided with a carriage in which we might most easily explore the lake scenery if we should be favoured with fine weather.
The cart preceded us. On the road, a large white snake made a prodigious spring from the grass at the driver, who, being thus challenged, was not slow in entering into combat with the creature. He jumped down and stoned it for some time with much diligence before it would lie down so that he might drive over it. As we proceeded the country became richer, and we had fine views of the heights which cluster round the infant Hudson, and of the Green Mountains of Vermont.
We were all astonished at the splendour of Glen's Falls. The full though narrow Hudson rushes along amid enormous masses of rock, and leaps sixty feet down the chasms and precipices which occur in the passage, sweeping between dark banks of shelving rocks below, its current speckled with foam. The noise is so tremendous that I cannot conceive how people can fix their dwellings in the immediate neighbourhood. There is a long bridge over the roaring floods which vibrates incessantly, and clusters of sawmills deform the scene. There is stonecutting as well as planking done at these mills. The fine black marble of the place is cut into slabs, and sent down to New-York to be polished. It was the busiest scene that I saw near any water-power in America.
Lake George lies nine miles beyond Glen's Falls. We saw the lake while we were yet two miles from Caldwell, the pretty village at its southern extremity. It stretched blue among the mountains in the softening light; and we anticipated what our pleasures were to be as we looked upon the framework of mountains in which this gem is set. We had just emerged from a long and severe winter. We had been walking streets in every stage of thaw; and it was many months since we had loitered about in the full enjoyment of open air and bright verdure, as we hoped to do here. This trip was to be a foretaste of a long summer and autumn of outdoor delights.
The people at the inn were busy cleaning, in preparation for summer company; but they gave us a welcome, and lodged and tended us well. Our windows and piazza commanded a fine view of the lake (here just a mile broad), of the opposite mountains, and of the white beach which sweeps round the southern extremity of the sheet of waters, as transparent as the sea about the Bermudas.
As we had hoped, the next morning was sunny and warm. We employed it in exploring the ground about Fort William Henry, which stands on an eminence a little way back from the water, and is now merely an insignificant heap of ruins. The French and Indians used to pour down upon the settlements in the plains by the passes of the Lakes Champlain and George, and near these passes were fought some of the severest battles recorded in American history. The mountain opposite our windows at the Lake House is called French Mountain, from its being the point where the French showed themselves on the bloody 8th of September, 1755, when three battles were fought in the neighbourhood on the same day. It was two years later when the Marquis of Montcalm conducted an army of 10,000 men to invest Fort William Henry. Colonel Monroe, who held it for the British, was obliged, after a gallant defence, to capitulate. He marched out with 3000 men, and many women and children. The Indians attached to the French army committed outrages which it is thought the marquis might have prevented. But it is probable that, when the guilt of taking savages for allies in offensive warfare is once incurred, any amount of mischief may ensue which no efforts of the commander can control. Every one knows the horrible story of Miss McCrea, the young lady who was on the way to be married to her lover in the British army, and who was tomahawked and scalped by the Indians in whose charge she was travelling. During the recrimination between the commanders on this occasion, General Burgoyne explained his inability to control the movements of passionate savages; and it must be supposed that Montcalm had no more power over the Indians who plundered and then murdered almost the whole number of the British who evacuated Fort William Henry. It was a horrible scene of butchery. We went over the ground, now waste and still, tangled with bushes, and inhabited only by birds and reptiles.
After wandering for some hours on the beach, and breaking our way through the thick groves which skirt it, dwelling upon the exquisite scene of the blue lake, with its tufted islands shut in by mountains, we wished to find some place where we might obtain an equally good distant view, and yet enjoy the delights of the margin of the water. By climbing a fence we got to a green bank, whence we could reach a log in the water; and here we basked, like a party of terrapins, till dinnertime. The foliage of the opposite woods, on French Mountain, seemed to make great progress under the summer warmth of this day; and by the next morning the soft green tinge was perceptible on them, which, after the dry hardness of winter, is almost as beautiful as the full leaf.