LETTERXX.
Departure from Albany.—Difficulty of hiring a Carriage.—Arrival at Cohoz.—Description of the curious Fall there of the Mohawk River.—Still-water.—Saratoga.—Few of the Works remaining there.—Singular Mineral Springs near Saratoga.—Fort Edward.—Miss M‘Crea cruelly murdered there by Indians.—Fort Ann, wretched Road thither.—Some Observations on the American Woods.—Horses jaded.—Difficulty of getting forward.—Arrive at Skenesborough.—Dreadfully infested by Musquitoes.—Particular Description of that Insect.—Great Danger ensues sometimes from their Bite.—Best Remedy.
VIEWof theCOHOZ FALL.
VIEWof theCOHOZ FALL.
VIEWof theCOHOZ FALL.
MY DEAR SIR, Skenesborough, July.
COHOZ FALL.
WE remained in Albany for a few days, and then set off for Skenesborough, upon Lake Champlain, in a carriage hired for the purpose. The hiring of this vehicle was a matter attended with some trouble, and detained us longer in the town than we wished to stay. There were only two carriages to be had in the whole place, and the owners having an understanding with each other, and thinkingthat we should be forced to give whatever price they asked, positively refused to let us have either of them for less than seventy dollars, equal to fifteen guineas. We on our part as positively refused to comply with a demand which we knew to be exorbitant, and resolved to wait patiently in Albany for some other conveyance, rather than submit to such an imposition. The fellows held out for two days, but at the end of that time one of them came to tell us we might have his carriage for half the price, and accordingly we took it.
Early the next morning we set off, and in about two hours arrived at the small village of Cohoz, close to which is the remarkable fall in the Mohawk River. This river takes its rise to the north-east of Lake Oneida, and after a course of one hundred and forty miles, disembogues into the Hudson or North River, about ten miles above Albany. The Cohoz Fall is about three miles distant from its mouth. The breadth of the river is three hundred yards; a ledge of rocks extends quite across, and from the top of them the water falls about fifty feet perpendicular; the line of the fall from one side of the river to the other is nearly straight. The appearance of this fall varies very much, according to the quantity of water; when the river is full, the water descends in an unbroken sheet from one bankto the other, whilst at other times the greater part of the rocks are left uncovered. The rocks are of a remarkable dark colour, and so also is the earth in the banks, which rise to a great height on either side. There is a very pleasing view of this cataract as you pass over the bridge across the river, about three quarters of a mile lower down.
From hence we proceeded along the banks of the Hudson River, through the town of Still-water, which receives its name from the uncommon stillness of the river opposite to it, and late in the evening reached Saratoga, thirty-five miles from Albany. This place contains about forty houses, and a Dutch reformed church, but they are so scattered about that it has not the smallest appearance of a town.
SARATOGA.
In this neighbourhood, upon the borders of a marsh, are several very remarkable mineral springs; one of them, in the crater of a rock, of a pyramidical form, about five feet in height, is particularly curious. This rock seems to have been formed by the petrifaction of the water: all the other springs are likewise surrounded with petrifactions of the same kind. The water in the principal spring, except at the beginning of the summer, when it regularly overflows, remains about eight inches below the rim of the crater, and bubbles upas if boiling. The crater is nine inches in diameter. The various properties of the water have not been yet ascertained with any great accuracy; but it is said to be impregnated with a fossile acid and some saline substance; there is also a great portion of fixed air in it. An opportunity is here afforded for making some curious experiments.
If animals be put down into the crater, they will be immediately suffocated; but if not kept there too long they recover again upon being brought into the open air.
If a lighted candle be put down, the flame will be extinguished in an instant, and not even the smallest spark left in the wick.
If the water immediately taken from the spring be put into a bottle, closely corked, and then shaken, either the cork will be forced out with an explosion, or the bottle will be broken; but if lest in an open vessel it becomes vapid in less than half an hour. The water is very pungent to the taste, and acts as a cathartic on some people, as an emetic on others.
Of the works thrown up at Saratoga by the British and American armies during the war, there are now scarcely any remains. The country round about is well cultivated, and the trenches have been mostly levelled by the plough. We here crossed the Hudson River,and proceeded along its eastern shore as far as Fort Edward, where it is lost to the view, for the road still runs on towards the north, whilst the river takes a sudden bend to the west.
FORT EDWARD.
Fort Edward was dismantled prior to the late American war; but the opposite armies, during that unhappy contest, were both in the neighbourhood. Many of the people, whom we found living here, had served as soldiers in the army, and told us a number of interesting particulars relative to several events which happened in this quarter. The landlord of the tavern where we stopped, for one, related all the circumstances attending Miss M‘Crea’s death, and pointed out on a hill, not far from the house, the very spot where she was murdered by the Indians, and the place of her interment. This beautiful young lady had been engaged to an officer in General Burgoyne’s army, who, anxious for her safety, as there were several marauding parties going about in the neighbourhood where she lived, sent a party of trusty Indians to escort her to the camp. These Indians had partly executed their commission, and were approaching with their charge in sight of the British camp, when they were met by another set of Indians belonging to a different tribe, that was also attending the British army at this time. In a few minutes it became a matter of disputebetween them which should have the honour of conducting her to the camp; from words they came to blows, and blood was on the point of being drawn, when one of their chiefs, to settle the matter without farther mischief, went up to Miss M‘Crea, and killed her on the spot with a blow of his tomahawk. The object of contention being thus removed, the Indians returned quietly to the camp. The enormity of the crime, however, was too great not to attract public notice, and it turned the minds of every person against the Indians, who had not before witnessed their ferocity on occasions equally shocking to humanity. The impolicy of employing such barbarians was now strongly reprobated, and in a short time afterwards most of them were dismissed from our army.
WOODS.
Fort Edward stands near the river. The town of the same name, is at the distance of one or two hundred yards from it, and contains about twenty houses. Thus far we had got on tolerably well; but from hence to Fort Anne, which was also dismantled prior to the late war, the road is most wretched, particularly over a long causeway between the two forts, formed originally for the transporting of cannon, the soil here being extremely moist and heavy. The causeway consists of large trees laid side by side transversely, someof which having decayed, great intervals are left, wherein the wheels of the carriage were sometimes locked so fast that the horses alone could not possibly extricate them. To have remained in the carriage over this part of the road would really have been a severe punishment; for although boasted of as being the very best in Albany, it had no sort of springs, and was in fact little better than a common waggon; we therefore alighted, took our guns, and amused ourselves with shooting as we walked along through the woods. The woods here had a much more majestic appearance than any that we had before met with on our way from Philadelphia; this, however, was owing more to the great height than to the thickness of the trees, for I could not see one that appeared more than thirty inches in diameter; indeed, in general, the girt of the trees in the woods of America is but very small in proportion to their height, and trifling in comparison of that of the forest trees in Great Britain. The thickest tree I ever saw in the country was a sycamore, which grew upon the banks of the Shenandoah River, just at its junction with the Patowmac, in a bed of rich earth, close to the water; yet this tree was no more than about four feet four inches in diameter. On the low grounds in Kentucky, and on some of the bottoms in the westernterritory, it is said that trees are commonly to be met with seven and eight feet in diameter. Where this is the case, the trees must certainly grow much farther apart than they do in the woods in the middle states, towards the Atlantic, for there they spring up so very close to each other, that it is absolutely impossible for them to attain to a great diameter.
The woods here were composed chiefly of oaks[27], hiccory, hemlock, and beech trees, intermixed with which, appeared great numbers of the smooth bark or Weymouth pines, as they are called, that seem almost peculiar to this part of the country. A profusion of wild raspberries were growing in the woods here, really of a very good flavour: they are commonly found in the woods to the northward of this; in Canada they abound every where.
27.There are upwards of twenty different kinds of oaks in America.
27.There are upwards of twenty different kinds of oaks in America.
27.There are upwards of twenty different kinds of oaks in America.
SKENESBOROUGH.
Beyond Fort Anne, which is situated at the distance of eight miles from Fort Edward, the roads being better, we once more mounted into our vehicle; but the miserable horses, quite jaded, now made a dead stop; in vain the driver bawled, and stamped, and swore; his whip had been previously worn out some hours, owing to the frequent use he had made of it, and the animals no longer feelingits heavy lash, seemed as determined as the mules of the abbess of Andouillets to go no farther. In this situation we could not help bantering the fellow upon the excellence of his cattle, which he had boasted so much of at setting out, and he was ready to cry with vexation at what we said; but having accidentally mentioned the sum we had paid for the carriage, his passion could no longer be restrained, and it broke forth in all its fury. It appeared that he was the owner of two of the horses, and for the use of them, and for driving the carriage, was to have had one half of the hire; but the man whom we had agreed with, and paid at Albany, had given him only ten dollars as his moiety, assuring him, at the same time, that it was exactly the half of what we had given, although in reality it fell short of the sum by seven dollars and a half. Thus cheated by his companion, and left in the lurch by his horses, he vowed vengeance against him on his return; but as protestations of this nature would not bring us any sooner to our journey’s end, and as it was necessary that something should be immediately done, if we did not wish to remain all night in the woods, we suggested the idea, in the mean time, of his conducting the foremost horses as postillion, whilst one of our servants should drive the pair next to the wheel. This planwas not started with any degree of seriousness, for we could not have supposed that a tall meagre fellow, upwards of six feet high, and clad in a pair of thin nankeen breeches, would very readily bestride the raw boned back of a horse, covered with the profuse exudations which the intense heat of the weather, and the labour the animal had gone through, necessarily excited. As much tired, however, of our pleasantries as we were of his vehicle, and thinking of nothing, I believe, but how he could best get rid of us, he eagerly embraced the proposal, and accordingly, having furnished himself with a switch from the adjoining thicket, he mounted his harnessed Rosinante. In this style we proceeded; but more than once did our gigantic postillion turn round to bemoan the sorry choice he had made; as often did we urge the necessity of getting out of the woods; he could make no answer; so jogging slowly along, we at last reached the little town of Skenesborough, much to the amusement of every one who beheld our equipage, and much to our own satisfaction; for, owing to the various accidents we had met with, such as traces breaking, bridles slipping off the heads of the horses, and the noble horses themselves sometimes slipping down, &c. &c. we had beenno less than five hours in travelling the last twelve miles.
MUSQUITOES.
Skenesborough stands just above the junction of Wood Creek with South River, as it is called in the best maps, but which, by the people in the neighbourhood, is considered as a part of Lake Champlain. At present there are only about twelve houses in the place; but if the navigation of Wood Creek is ever opened, so as to connect Lake Champlain with the North River, a scheme which has already been seriously thought of, it will, doubtless, soon become a trading town of considerable importance, as all the various productions of the shores of the lake will then be collected there for the New York and Albany markets. Notwithstanding all the disadvantages of a land carriage of forty miles to the North River, a small portion of flour and potash, the staple commodities of the state of New York, is already sent to Skenesborough from different parts of the lake, to be forwarded to Albany. A considerable trade also is carried on through this place, and over Lake Champlain, between New York and Canada. Furs and horses principally are sent from Canada, and in return they get East Indian goods and various manufactures. Lake Champlain opens a very ready communicationbetween New York and the country bordering on the St. Lawrence; it is emphatically called by the Indians, Caniad—Eri Guarunte, the mouth or door of the country.
MUSQUITOES.
Skenesborough is most dreadfully infested with musquitoes; so many of them attacked us the first night of our sleeping there, that when we arose in the morning our faces and hands were covered all over with large pustules, precisely like those of a person in the small pox. This happened too notwithstanding that the people of the house, before we went to bed, had taken all the pains possible to clear the room of them, by fumigating it with the smoke of green wood, and afterwards securing the windows with gauze blinds; and even on the second night, although we destroyed many dozens of them on the walls, after a similar fumigation had been made, yet we suffered nearly as much. These insects were of a much larger size than any I ever saw elsewhere, and their bite was uncommonly venomous. General Washington told me, that he never was so much annoyed by musquitoes in any part of America as in Skenesborough, for that they used to bite through the thickest boot. The situation of the place is indeed peculiarly favourable for them, being just on the margin of a piece of water, almost stagnant, and shaded with thick woods.The musquito is of the same species with the common gnat in England, and resembles it very closely both in size and shape. Like the gnat it lays its eggs on the surface of the water, where they are hatched in the course of a few days, unless the water is agitated, in which last case they are all destroyed. From the egg is produced a grub, which changes to a chrysalis, and afterwards to a musquito; this last change takes place on the surface of the water, and if at the moment that the insect first spreads its wings the water is not perfectly still and the air calm, it will be inevitably destroyed; at those parts of the lake, therefore, which are most exposed, and where the water is often agitated, no such thing as a musquito is ever seen; neither are they ever found along a large and rapid river, where the shores are lofty and dry; but in the neighbourhood of marshes, low grounds, and stagnant waters, they always abound. Musquitoes appear to be particularly fond of the fresh blood of Europeans, who always suffer much more the first year of their arrival in America than they do afterwards. The people of the country seem quite to disregard their attacks. Wherever they fix their sting, a little tumor or pustule usually arises, supposed to be occasioned by the fermentation, when mixed with the blood, of a small quantityof liquor which the insect always injects into the wound it makes with its spicula, as may be seen through a microscope, and which it probably does to render the blood more fluid. The disagreeable itching this excites is most effectually allayed by the application of volatile alkali; or if the part newly stung be scratched and immediately bathed in cold water, that also affords considerable relief; but after the venom has been lodged for any time, scratching only increases the itching, and it may be attended with great danger. Repeated instances have occurred of people having been laid up for months, and narrowly escaping the loss of a limb, from imprudently rubbing a part which had been bitten for a long time. Great ease is also derived from opening the pustules on the second day with a lancet, and letting out the blood and watery matter.