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

Above Tide-Water 559

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

CONGRESS SPRING IN 182O

Johnson. Johnson, wounded at the battle of Lake George, twelve years before, was subject to recurring attacks of illness due to that injury. The Mohawks, who held him in greater esteem probabl}' than any other white man ever won from them, carried him

through the forest to the " High Rock," and with solemn ceremonies laid him in the healing pool. His letter to his friend, General Philip Schuyler, is interesting:

j\Iy Dear Schuyler [he wrote], I have just returned from a visit to a most amazing Spring, which has almost effected my cure; and I have sent to Doctor Stringer, of New York, to come up and analyse it.

56o The Hudson River

The fact seems to have been that vSir WilHam, having reached the spring on a litter, carried on the shoulders of his Mohawk friends, was so far restored that he accomplished part of his return journey to Schenectady on foot. In 1783, General vSchuyler, who had not forgotten the letter of his quondam friend, though the sad events of the war had cut him off from intimacy with the Johnsons, made a road through the woods from his estate at Schuylersville to the spring, and, taking his family there, encamped for several weeks. The same year, General Washington, being distracted by the long idleness of his waiting at Newburgh, undertook a brief tour of the northern and western part of the State, to study particularly the topography of the country and its battle-fields.