was mounted with cannon transported with much toil from Albany up the wild valley of the Mohawk.

In 1756 Oswego was the northern rendezvous of Gen. Shirley, with fifteen hundred men, on his expedition against the French forts Frontenac and Niagara. From this period Oswego became an important military post on the northern frontier, and an object of jealousy to the French. At length it was attacked in 1757 by five thousand men under Gen. Montcalm, and captured after a gallant resistance on the part of its garrison. On retiring from Oswego, Montcalm left it a heap of ruins, but in 1758 Gen. Bradstreet appeared upon the scene with his army of three thousand three hundred and forty men, on his march against Fort Frontenac, and soon rebuilt the decaying fort. After the close of the last French and Indian war, Oswego was occupied by an English garrison until the year 1798, when it was abandoned to the Americans.

IV.

OLD FORTS ON THE WESTERN WAR-PATH.

Up to the end of the last French and Indian war, Albany and Schenectady were strongly fortified and surrounded by palisades. They were as much walled cities as those of mediæval times in Europe. In Albany a huge frowning fort called Fort Frederick, bristling with cannon, filled up State street a little below where the Capitol now stands, its northeast bastion resting on the ground now occupied by St. Peter's church. At Schenectady was a wooden fort in the line of palisades which surrounded the village, with four block-houses as flankers. Between Schenectady and Swa

geh was a line of forts built for the protection of the traveling fur-traders, and as barriers to French and Indian invasion from the valley of the St. Lawrence. The first of these was at the mouth of the Schohariekill, and was called Fort Hunter. It was built on the site of old Indian Tehon-de-lo-ga, the lower castle of the Mohawks. Above Fort Hunter, near the Indian Ga-no-jo-hi-e-"washing the basin -the middle Mohawk castle, was Fort Plain. The Indian name of Fonda was Ga-na-wa-da-meaning "over the rapids." Of Little Falls, it was Ta-la-que-ga-"small bushes," and of Herkimer the Indian name was Te-uge-ga, the same as the river. At Herkimer was Hendrick's castle and Fort Herkimer, near Ga-ne-ga-ha-ga, the upper Mohawk castle.

The Indian name for Utica was Nun-da-da-sis-meaning "around the hill." At Utica, the Indian trail from the west crossed the river. To defend this ford of the Mohawk at Utica, a small earth-work was built in 1756, and named Fort Schuyler. From the little settlement began at this old fort Utica has become the queen city of the Mohawk valley. The territory upon which the city of Utica has been built was granted in 1734 to Gov. Cosby, and was long known in colonial annals as "Cosby's Manor."

A little above Utica was a small Indian station called Ole-hisk-"the place of nettles." This is now Oriskany, one of the famous battle-grounds of the Revolution. At the carrying place between the Mohawk River and Wood Creek was the Indian Da-ya-hoo-wa-quat, meaning "the carrying place." Here Fort Williams was built in 1732, and on its site, in 1758, was built Fort Stanwix. During the Revolutionary war the name Fort Stanwix was changed to

Fort Schuyler, and should not be mistaken for the little fort at Utica of that name. At Wood Creek, a mile from Fort Stanwix, Fort Bull was built in 1737.

At the mouth of Wood Creek, on the Oneida Lake, a Royal Block-house was built, and at the west end of Oneida Lake, in 1758, Fort Brewerton was built. The Indian name for Wood Creek was Ka-ne-go-dick; for Oneida Lake was Ga-no-a-lo-hole-"head on a pole." For Syracuse the Indian name was Na-ta-dunk, meaning "pine-tree broken with top hanging down," and the Indian name of Fort Brewerton was Ga-do-quat. Fort Brewerton, the remains of which may still be seen from the railroad track, was an octagonal palisaded fort of about three hundred and fifty feet in diameter. After the close of the French war, and during Pontiac's war, Fort Brewerton was commanded by Capt. Mungo Campbell, of the 55th Highlanders. Mrs. Grant, of Laggan, in her Memoirs of an American Lady, gives an interesting description of this fort, which she visited while on her way to Oswego about the year 1763.

At the falls on the Oswego River, (now Fulton) Gen. Bradstreet built a small stockaded fort in 1758, and garrisoned it with one hundred men. In 1755, a new fort was built at Oswego by Col. Mercer. This fort is now known as Fort Ontario.

Such was the line of defences bristling along the old western war-path between Albany and Oswego at the close of the last French and Indian war. For a hundred years this old western trail was the pathway of contending armies, its streams were often crimsoned with blood, and its wild meadows filled with nameless graves.

Among the earliest dates in which the name Saratoga appears in history is the year 1684. It was then not the name of a town, nor of a county, nor of a great watering place, but it was the name of an old Indian hunting ground situated along both sides of the Hudson River. The Hudson, after it breaks through its last mountain barrier above Glens Falls, for many miles of its course runs through a wider valley. After winding for a while through this wider valley, it reaches the first series of its bordering hills, and this old hunting ground was situate where the outlying hills begin to crowd down to the river banks. In the Indian tongue it was significantly called Se-rach-ta-gue, meaning "the hillside country of the great river.*

It also has been said Saratoga, in the Indian language, means the "place of the swift water," in allusion to the rapids and falls that break the stillness of the stream where this hillside country begins on the river.t

An Indian whose name was O-ron-hia-tek-ha of Caugh*Steele's Analysis, p. 13.

+ Vide Judge Scott's historical address at Ballston Spa, July 4th, 1876, also, Reminiscences of Saratoga, by Wm. L. Stone, p. 5.

na-wa-ga on the St. Lawrence, who was well acquainted with the Mohawk dialect, informed Dr. Hough, the historian, that Saratoga was from Sa-ra-ta-ke, meaning “a place where the track of the heel may be seen," in allusion to a spot near by, where depressions like foot-prints may be seen in the rocks. Yet Morgan, in his League of the Iroquois, says the signification of Saratoga is lost.

But whether its meaning be this, that, or the other, I am sure that it is gratifying to us all that this famous summer resort, situate as it is on American soil, bears an American

name.

As early as 1684, this hillside country of the Hudson, the ancient Indian Se-rach-ta-gue, was sold by the Mohawk sachems to Peter Philip Schuyler and six other eminent citizens of Albany, and the Indian grant confirmed by the English government. This old hunting ground then became known in history as the Saratoga patent. As set forth in the Indian deed and described in the letters patent, it was a territory of fifteen miles in length along the river and six miles in width on both sides. It reached from the Di-on-on-da-ho-wa, now the Battenkill, near Fort Miller, on the north, to the Ta-nen-da-ho-wa, now the Anthony's kill, near Mechanicville, on the south. The towns of old Saratoga and Stillwater on the west side of the river, and the town of Easton (the east town) on the east side of the river, are within the bounds of this ancient patent. This was Saratoga of the olden time, called on some old maps So-roe-to-gos land.

In the year 1687, three years after the Mohawks had sold this hunting ground, and the patent had been granted, Gov. Dongan of New York attempted to induce a band of