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

THE HUDSON.

ill the State of Ycrmont, and, before leaving the borders of that commonwealth, receives the Eoaring branch : its entire length is about fifty miles. Within two miles of its mouth are remarkable rapids and falls, which the tourist should never pass by unseen : the best point of view is from the bottom of a steep precipice on the southern side of the stream. The descent is fifty or sixty feet, very difiicult, and somewhat dangerous. It was raining copiously when we visited it, which made the descent still more difficult, for the loose slate and the small sparse shrubbery were

CAXAL BRIDGE ACROSS THE HUDSON ABOVE THE SARATOGA DAM.

very insecure. Under a shelving black rock on the margin of the abyss into which the waters pour, we found a good place for observation. The spectacle was grand. For about three hundred feet above the great fall, the stream rushes through a narrow rocky chasm, roaring and foaming ; and then, in a still narrower space, it leaps into the dark gulf which has been named the Devil's Caldron, in a perpendicular fall of almost forty feet.