A VISIT TO THE SARATOGA BATTLEFIELD 



By Stewart H. Burnham. 



TOURING my residence in Albany, N. Y., three trips were 

 made to the Saratoga battlefield. The easiest and quick- 

 est way to reach this historic spot, from the south, is tO' take the 

 Delaware & Hudson train to Mechanicsville ; and there change 

 tO' the Hudson Valley trolley up the river, getting off the car 

 either at Bemus Heights or Wilbur's Basin and ascending the 

 roads a mile or two, westward from the old Champlain canal. 

 Scattered over the battlefield and along the roads are many 

 granite tablets marking historic spots ; and from almost every 

 portion of the field, a fine view of Willard Mountain, 6 miles 

 away across the river, in Easton, may be had; while tO' the 

 southeast forty miles distant, Greylock, King of the Berkshires, 

 rears his head. 



Along the road at Bemus Heights, the mottled bergamot 

 {Mentha gentilis) grows ; and about an old house bottom, the 

 matrimony vine (Lycium lialiinifolunii) , which has only been 

 recorded twice elsewhere in the Lake George Flora, in similar 

 situations was found. Ascending the clayey road at Bemus 

 Heights, one passes the tablet marking the site of the old Bemus 

 tavern. Near by, in the fields, a little of the whorled milkwort 

 {Poly gala verticillata) grows at about its northern limit in the 

 Hudson valley; with the slender gerardia {Gerardia tenui- 

 folia), which previously has only been collected in the flora, 

 across the river at Hudson Falls, several miles to the north. 



Between the canal and the battlefield are numerous deep 

 ravines, mostly belonging to the drainage of Mill Creek ; but a 



