Saratoga has been a fort built of wood by the English, to stop the attacks of the French Indians upon the English inhabitants in these parts, and to serve as a rampart to Albany. It is situated on a hill, on the east-side of the river Hudson, and is built of thick posts driven in to the ground, close to each other, in the manner of palisades, forming a square, the length of whose sides was within the reach of a musket-shot. At each corner are the houses of the officers, and within the palisades are the barracks, all of timber. This fort has been kept in order and was garrisoned till the last war, when the English themselves in 1747 set fire to it, not being able to defend themselves in it against the attacks of the French and their Indians; for as soon as a party of them went out of the fort, some of these enemies lay concealed, and either took them all prisoners, or shot them.
I shall only mention one, out of many artful tricks which were played here, and which both the English and French who were present here at that time, told me repeatedly. A party of French, with their [[290]]Indians, concealed themselves one night in a thicket near the fort. In the morning some of their Indians, as they had previously resolved, went to have a nearer view of the fort. The English fired upon them, as soon as they saw them at a distance; the Indians pretended to be wounded, fell down, got up again, ran a little way, and dropped again. Above half the garrison rushed out to take them prisoners; but as soon as they were come up with them, the French and the remaining Indians came out of the bushes, betwixt the fortress and the English, surrounded them, and took them prisoners. Those who remained in the fort had hardly time to shut the gates, nor could they fire upon the enemy, because they equally exposed their countrymen to danger, and they were vexed to see their enemies take and carry them off in their fight and under their cannon. Such French artifices as these made the English weary of their ill-planned fort. We saw some of the palisades still in the ground. There was an island in the river, near Saratoga, much better situated for a fortification. The country is flat on both sides of the river near Saratoga, and its soil good. The wood round about was generally cut down. The shores of the river are high, steep, and consist of earth. We saw some [[291]]hills in the north, beyond the distant forests. The inhabitants are Dutch, and bear an inveterate hatred to all Englishmen.
We lay over night in a little hut of boards erected by the people who were come to live here.
June the 25th. Several saw-mills were built here before the war, which were very profitable to the inhabitants, on account of the abundance of wood which grows here.
The boards were easily brought to Albany, and from thence to New York, in rafts every spring with the high water; but all the mills were burnt at present.
This morning we proceeded up the river, but after we had advanced about an English mile, we fell in with a water-fall, which cost us a deal of pains before we could get our canoe over it. The water was very deep just below the fall, owing to its hollowing the rock out by the fall. In every place where we met with rocks in the river, we found the water very deep, from two to four fathoms and upwards; because by finding a resistance it had worked a deeper channel into the ground. Above the fall, the river is very deep again, the water glides along silently, and increases suddenly near the shores. On both sides till you come to Fort Nicholson, the shore is covered with tall [[292]]trees. After rowing several miles, we passed another water-fall, which is longer and more dangerous than the preceding one.
Giants-pots[81], which I have described in the memoirs of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, are abundant near the fall of the rock which extends across the river. The rock was almost dry at present, the river containing very little water at this season of the year. Some of the giants-pots were round, but in general they were oblong. At the bottom of most of them lay either stones or grit, in abundance. Some were fifteen inches in diameter, but some were less. Their depth was likewise different, and some that I observed were above two foot deep. It is plain that they owed their origin to the whirling of the water round a pebble, which by that means was put in motion, together with the sand.
We intended to have gone quite up to Fort Nicholson in the canoe, which would have been a great convenience to us; but we found it impossible to get over the upper fall, the canoe being heavy, and scarce any water in the river, except in one place where it flowed over the rock, and where it was impossible to get up, on account of the [[293]]steepness, and the violence of the fall. We were accordingly obliged to leave our canoe here, and to carry our baggage through unfrequented woods to Fort Anne, on the river Woodcreek which is a space from forty-three to fifty English miles, during which we were quite spent, through the excess of heat. Sometimes we had no other way of crossing deep rivers, than by cutting down tall trees, which stood on their banks, and throwing them across the water. All the land we passed over this afternoon was almost level, without hills and stones, and entirely covered with a tall and thick forest, in which we continually met with trees which were fallen down, because no one made the least use of the woods. We passed the next night in the midst of the forest, plagued with muskitoes, gnats, and wood-lice, and in fear of all kinds of snakes,
June the 26th. Early this morning we continued our journey through the wood, along the river Hudson. There was an old path leading to Fort Nicholson, but it was so overgrown with grass, that we discovered it with great difficulty. In some places we found plenty of raspberries, some of which were already ripe.
Fort Nicholson is the place on the eastern shore of the river Hudson, where a [[294]]wooden fortification formerly stood. We arrived here some time before noon, and rested a while. Colonel Lydius resided here till the beginning of the last war, chiefly with a view of carrying on a greater trade with the French Indians; but during the war, they burnt his house, and took his son prisoner. The fort was situated on a plain, but at present the place is all overgrown with a thicket. It was built in the year 1709, during the war which Queen Anne carried on against the French, and it was named after the brave English general Nicholson. It was not so much a fort, as a magazine to Fort Anne. In the year 1711, when the English naval attempt upon Canada miscarried, the English themselves set fire to this place. The soil hereabouts seems to be pretty fertile. The river Hudson passed close by here.