Below it are considerable rapids ; just above it is a bridge, which has a carriage-way for the public use, and a narrower passage for the horses that draw the canal boats. These vessels float' safely on the usually still water of the river, but sometimes, when the stream is very full, the passage is attended with some difficulty, if not danger, on account of the strong though sluggish current. When we visited the spot, a large-class boat lay wrecked in the rapids below, having gone over the dam the day before.

•The country in this vicinity is beautiful : the valley is narrow, and the hills, on the eastern side especially, rise one above the other in the landscape, until the view is bounded by a broken mountain range beyond. Here we crossed the river upon the canal bridge, and rode down to the mouth of the Batten-Kill, near where it enters the Hudson, to visit the spot-- on the plain just above its mouth -- where the army of Burgoyne lay encamped, before he crossed the Hudson to engage in those conflicts at Bemis's Heights, which resulted in his discomfiture and captivity. There he established a slaughter-yard ; and it is said that the fertility imparted to the soil by the blood and offal left there was visible in its effects upon the crops raised thereon for more than sixty years afterwards. The Batten-Kill is a shallow and rapid stream, and one of the largest of the tributaries of the Hudson, flowing in from the eastward. It rises