FORT EDWARD.
The upper Hudson River has various falls providing good water-power, which are largely availed of by paper-mills. The famous Fort Edward, one of these noted paper-making towns, is but a short distance from Saratoga. The railroad, leading from Saratoga and the south to Lake Champlain and the north, here crosses the Hudson in a region of great historic interest. This was the beginning of the portage in early times between the river and the lake, the railway route following the ancient Indian trail. The two waters are actually connected by the Champlain Canal, and, curiously enough, this makes New England an island, thus realizing the belief of the original explorers. Rev. Robert Cushman, who preached the first sermon before the Massachusetts Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1621, afterwards published it with an introduction describing New England, in which he says: "So far as we can find, it is an island, and near about the quantity of England, being cut out from the mainland in America, as England is from the main of Europe, by a great arm of the sea (Hudson's River) which entereth in forty degrees and runneth up northwest and by west, and goeth out either into the South Sea (Pacific Ocean) or else into the Bay of Canada (Gulf of St. Lawrence)." There can still be seen at Fort Edward traces of the ramparts of the old fort commanding the portage, which was held and fought for in the eighteenth century. Originally a noble domain around it of one thousand square miles was granted to "our loving subject, the Reverend Godfridius Dellius, Minister of the Gospell att our city of Albany," for "the annual rent of one Raccoon Skin." The old gentleman, however, fell from grace, and the domain was taken away from him and the New York Legislature suspended him from the ministry for "deluding the Mohawk Indians, and illegal and surreptitious obtaining of said grant." Then it went to his successor, Rev. John Lydius, who lived in the quaint "Lydius House" in Albany. The first fort was built soon after Lydius took possession, and in 1744 he established a fur-trading station. A military road was then constructed from Saratoga to Whitehall on Lake Champlain, here crossing the river, and it was commanded by three forts, one at this crossing. The French destroyed the first fort, but Sir William Johnson made a successful expedition into the Lake Champlain district in 1755, and built here the strong post of Fort Edward. It was an important work during the whole French and Indian War, lasting seven years, and it was here that Lord Amherst organized the army which conquered Canada in 1759.
At Fort Edward first appeared as a British soldier one of the greatest heroes of the Revolution, Israel Putnam. He had joined Sir William Johnson's expedition as captain in a Connecticut regiment. He performed here a daring exploit; the wooden barracks had caught fire and the garrison vainly tried to subdue the flames, which approached the powder magazine, and the danger was frightful. The water-gate was opened, and the soldiers in line passed buckets of water up from the river, when Putnam mounted the roof of the next building to the magazine and threw the water on the fire. The commander, fearing for his life, ordered him to desist, but he would not leave until he felt the roof giving away. Then he got alongside the magazine, its timbers already charred, and hurled bucket after bucket upon it, with final success, the magazine being saved and an explosion prevented. The fire was quenched, but the burnt and blistered hero was for a month a sufferer in the hospital. Putnam had an adventure at the rapids a few miles below Fort Edward, where he was out with a scouting party, and being alongside the bank alone in his boat, was surprised by the Indians. He could not cross the river above the rapids quickly enough to elude their muskets, and the only escape was down the cataract. Without hesitation, to the astonishment of the savages, his boat shot directly down the foaming, whirling current, amid eddies and over rugged rocks, and in a few moments he had escaped them, and was floating on the tranquil river below. Believing him to be protected by the Great Spirit, they dared not follow. Shortly afterwards, returning from a scout on Lake Champlain, Putnam's party was surprised, and the Indians captured and bound him to a tree. While thus situated, a battle between his friends and the enemy raged for an hour around the tree, he being under the hottest fire, but he was unscathed. The Indians were beaten and had to retreat, but they took their captive along, determined to have vengeance by roasting him alive. He was again tied to a tree, and the fire had been kindled and was blazing when the French commander, Molang, discovered and rescued him. Thus was Putnam seasoned for his great work in the Revolution.
The tragic murder of poor Jenny McCrea is also associated with Fort Edward. This post in the Revolution was held in 1777 by an American garrison, who retired before the advance of Burgoyne's army southward. Jenny McCrea, the graceful and winning daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman, who was betrothed to an officer in Burgoyne's army, was visiting a widow lady at Fort Edward. In order to secure Indian co-operation, Burgoyne had offered bounties for prisoners and scalps, at the same time forbidding the killing of unarmed persons. He found it difficult, however, to restrain the savages, who went about in small bodies seeking captives, and one of these parties, prowling around Fort Edward, entered the house where Jenny was staying and carried off Jenny and her friend. An alarm was given, and troops sent after them. The Indians had caught two horses, on one of which Jenny was mounted, when the pursuers assailed them with a volley of bullets. The Indians were unhurt, but the fair captive was mortally wounded and fell, and, as tradition relates, expired at the foot of a huge pine tree, which remained a memorial of the tragedy for nearly a century. The savages thus lost their prisoner, but they quickly scalped her, and taking her long black tresses, bathed in blood, to Burgoyne's camp, they claimed reward. They were accused of her murder, but denied it, and the horrid tale, magnified by repetition, caused the greatest indignation. General Gates issued an address, charging Burgoyne with hiring savages to scalp Europeans and their descendants, and describing Jenny as having been "dressed to meet her promised husband, but met her murderers." For this crime, it was added, Burgoyne had "paid the price of blood." Poor Jenny's murder, with Burgoyne's defeat, was employed most effectively by the opposition in the British House of Commons, Chatham and Burke eloquently denouncing the barbarity and merciless cruelties of his unfortunate campaign. Her lover declined longer to stay in Burgoyne's army, but retired to Canada, living there till old age. Jenny's remains are interred in the beautiful cemetery overlooking the Hudson above Fort Edward, marked by a monument recording her murder by a band of Indians at the age of seventeen, and reciting that the memorial was erected "To record one of the most thrilling incidents in the annals of the American Revolution; to do justice to the fame of the gallant British officer to whom she was affianced; and as a simple tribute to the memory of the departed." This gentle maiden's sacrifice was of priceless value in producing the revulsion of sentiment in Europe that had so much to do with the final success of the Revolution.
BAKER'S FALLS AND GLEN'S FALLS.
In coming to Fort Edward, the Hudson River sweeps around a grand curve from the west towards the south, much of its course over cascades and down rapids that are lined with mills. In a mile it descends eighty feet, these rapids being known as Baker's Falls, and just above is the village of Sandy Hill, having in its centre a pleasant elm-shaded green. Here was enacted a tragedy, in some respects rivalling the tale of Pocahontas. A party of sixteen, carrying supplies to Lake George, was surprised and captured by Indians, and taken to the trunk of a fallen tree on the spot where is now the village green, bound by hickory withes and seated in a row. The savages then began at the end of the row and tomahawked them one after another until only two remained, Lieutenant McGinnis commanding the party and a young teamster named Quackenboss. The tomahawk was brandished over the former, when he threw himself backward and tried to break his bonds. A dozen tomahawks instantly gleamed over him, and lying on his back he defended himself with his heels, but he was soon hacked to death. Quackenboss alone remained, and the deadly hatchet was raised over his head, when suddenly the arm of the savage was seized by a squaw, who cried, "You shall not kill him; he no fighter; he my dog." They spared him to become a beast of burden. Staggering under a pack of plunder almost too heavy to carry, they marched him towards Canada, the Indians bearing his companions' scalps as trophies. They sailed along Lake Champlain in canoes, and at the first Indian village at which they halted he was compelled to "run the gauntlet." He ran between rows of savages armed with heavy clubs, who beat him, an ordeal in which he was severely injured. The Indian woman, however, took him to her wigwam, bound up his wounds, and carefully nursed him until he recovered. He was ultimately ransomed, obtaining employment in Montreal. Finally returning to his home, he lived to a ripe old age, telling of his adventures until he died in 1820.
Following the curving Hudson River bank around to the westward, another series of rapids and cascades is ascended to the thriving manufacturing town of Glen's Falls. This magnificent cataract pours through a wild ravine having over seventy feet descent, the water flowing upon rough masses of black marble composing the rocky terraces the stream has broken down. The Mohicans had significant names for this famous cataract. One was Kayandorossa, meaning the "long deep hole," applied to the ravine; and another, Che-pon-tuc, or "hard climbing; a difficult place to get around." Along the north side of the ravine, upon a beautiful plain, is the manufacturing settlement of about ten thousand people, who use the admirable water-power and get the black marble out of adjacent quarries. Vast numbers of logs coming down the Hudson are gathered in a boom above the town, and sawmills cut them into lumber. Paper-mills cluster about the falls, and marble-saws work up the black rocks. In the centre of the ravine, above the falls, a cavern is hewn where a rocky islet makes a rude abutment for a bridge pier. Father Jogues, who came over from Lake George in 1645, was the first white man who saw this attractive region, and he wrote that the Indians then called the Hudson "Oi-o-gue" or "the beautiful river," while the Hollanders, settled on it farther down, had named it the "river Van Maurice." When the Dutch made their first explorations they found that the lower Mohawk and the upper valley of the Hudson, with the country northward extending into the Adirondacks, was the home of the Mohicans, an Algonquin tribe, and always at war with the Mohawks, their western neighbors higher up that valley. It was thought probable that with a view of securing assistance in this inveterate feud, the Mohicans received the Dutch settlers so amicably and gave them lands.
James Fenimore Cooper located around Glen's Falls the scene of his novel, the Last of the Mohicans, in which Hawkeye, looking out of the cavern in the ravine, gives his admirable description of the cataract as it appeared in the French and Indian War, before the millwright had come along to disturb the scenery. "Ay," he said, "there are the falls on two sides of us, and the river above and below. If you had daylight it would be worth the trouble to step up on the height of this rock and look at the perversity of the water. It falls by no rule at all; sometimes it leaps, sometimes it tumbles; there it skips; here it shoots; in one place 'tis as white as snow, and in another 'tis as green as grass; hereabouts it pitches into deep hollows that rumble and quake the 'arth, and thereaway it ripples and sings like a brook, fashioning whirlpools and gullies in the old stone as if 'twere no harder than trodden clay. The whole design of the river seems disconnected. First it runs smoothly as if meaning to go down the descent as things were ordered; then it angles about and faces the shores; nor are there places wanting where it looks backward, as if unwilling to leave the wilderness to mingle with the salt!"
SOURCES OF THE HUDSON.
The noble Hudson River, which we have ascended to Glen's Falls, flows out of the great Adirondack wilderness of Northern New York, the headwaters draining its extensive southern declivity. Among these virgin Adirondack woods and mountains, near the Long Lake, is the remote source of the western branch of the Hudson, the "Hendrick Spring." Surrounded by forest and swamp, this cool and shallow pool, about five feet in diameter, fringed by delicate ferns, and overhung with vines and shrubbery, is the beginning of the great river, and named in honor of its discoverer and first explorer: