The direction of the railway was changed after these piers were built at a heavy expense, and they remain as monuments of caprice, or of something still less commendable.

Fort Edward, five miles below Glen's Falls, by the river's course, was earliest known as the great carrying place, it being the point of overland departure for Lake Champlain, across the isthmus of five-and-twenty miles. It has occupied an important position in the history of JSTew York

BAKKK'S FALLS.

from an early period, and at the .time wc arc considering was a ^ciy thriving village of about two thousand inhabitants.

In the year 1696, the unscrupulous Governor Fletcher granted to one of his favourites, Avhom he styled "our Loving Subject, the Reverend Godfridius Dellius, Minister of the Gospell att our city of Albany," a tract of laud lying upon the cast side of the Hudson, between the northernmost bounds of the Saratoga patent, and a point of Lake Champlain, a distance of seventy miles, with an average Avidth of twelve miles. For this domain the worldly-minded clergyman was required, in the language of the grant, to pay, " on the feast-day of the Annunciation of our blessed Virgin Mary, at our City of Is^ew Yorke, the Annual Rent of one

THE HUDSON.

llaccoon Skin, in Lieu and Steade of all other Eents, Services, Dues, Dutycs, and Demands whatsoever for the said Tract of Land, and Islands, and Premises." Governor Bellomont soon succeeded Fletcher, and, through his influence, the legislature of the province annulled this and other similar gra^ts, That hody, exercising ecclesiastical as "well as civil functions, also passed a resolution, suspending Dellius from the ministry, for " deluding the Maquaas (Mohawk) Indians, and illegal and surreptitious obtaining of said grant." Dellius denied the authority of the legislature, and, after contesting his claim for a while, he returned to Holland.