Home / Bacon, Edgar Mayhew. The Hudson River from Ocean to Source: Historical, Legendary, Picturesque. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1903. / Passage

The Hudson River from Ocean to Source (Bacon, 1903)

Bacon, Edgar Mayhew. The Hudson River from Ocean to Source: Historical, Legendary, Picturesque. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1903. 279 words

On reaching the springs at Saratoga we found but three habitations and those but poor log houses, on the high bank of the meadow, where is now the eastern side of the street on the ridge near the Round Rock. This was the only spring then visited. The log cabins were almost full of strangers, among whom were several ladies and gentlemen from Albany, and we found it almost impossible to obtain accommodations even for two nights. . . . The neighbourhood of the Spring, like all the country we had seen for many miles, was a perfect forest.

The earliest advertising that Saratoga Springs seems to have received was through those recruits from different parts of the country who, having been called together to dispute the advance of Burgoyne and his army, became, when again dispersed to their homes, the pro]:)agandists of exaggerated tales of the wonderful fertility of the region. The Saratoga Springs of modern ken, having developed in three quarters of a century to one of the greatest watering-places on earth, with all the attractions that wealth and fashion can add to great natural advantages, cannot be described in such a work as this. The tale of its splendoin* is bewildering, the roll of those who have added to its gaiety, overwhelming. A list of those who have lodged in its great hostelries, or drank of its waters, would, perhaps, include a majority

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of the famous people who have hved during the past half -century. The peculiar virtues of the waters of Saratoga were long known to the Indians, who, in 1767, revealed them as a mark of special fricndshi]) to Sir William