108 
this fort and Fort William Henry to found a dock-yard. The 
communication between Ticonderoga and the United States would 
be well and doubly protected by the southern point of Lake Cham* 
plain, towards Whitehall, and by Lake George. If the English 
should attack the United States on this side, they would undoubt- 
edly waste much strength, and not advance a step, unless they 
had seized Ticonderoga. 
We left Caldwell at eight o’clock the next day, September 11, 
in two inconvenient carriages, and passed through a very unin¬ 
teresting, deep, sandy road, in a hilly country, covered with 
thorny trees, on our route to Saratoga springs, to which the whole 
fashionable world of the United States repairs in summer, for the 
fashionables have here the same mania which prevails in other 
countries, to visit the baths in summer, whether sick or well. 
The distance is twenty-seven miles. On our passage, we saw but 
one interesting object—the Hudson falls, which river we had left 
at Albany, and reached again nine miles from Caldwell, coming 
from the west. 
These falls are known under the name of Glenn’s Falls. A vil¬ 
lage of the same name is built in their vicinity, on the rocky 
shores of the river. The river is crossed by means of a pendant 
wooden bridge. The arches rest on pillars, consisting of large 
beams, which lie across each other, as tit-mouse traps are con¬ 
structed in my native country ; the bridge might therefore be 
called bird-cage bridge. These cages rest on a foundation of 
limestone, cut through by the Hudson in its .course. This river 
is really a remarkable sight in this sandy country. Above the 
bridge it is one hundred and sixty yards broad, and crossed by a 
dam, which conducts the water to the saw-mills along the banks. 
A single rock, on which, also, a saw-mill stands, divides into 
two parts, the principal fall, which is forty feet high. But there 
are, both above and below the principal falls, a number of smaller 
falls, which we could approach with ease, as. the water was very 
low. These falls are not indeed to be numbered among the 
largest, but among the handsomest falls which I have seen. A 
constant mist arises from them, and, as the sun shone very bril- 
liantly, we saw several rainbows at the same time. In the rock, 
as at Niagara, we observed some remarkable and deep cavities. 
They arise from the flintstones which are scattered throughout 
the limestone, and are washed away by the violence of the water. 
When these flintstones meet with resistance, or fall into a small 
cavity, they are constantly agitated by the falling water, and mov¬ 
ing in a circular direction, form by degrees deep cavities in 
the soft limestone. At the base of the small island, which divides 
the chief fall into two parts, a remarkable cave appears below the 
falls, leading to the other side of the rock; this was also undoubt- 
