may select those you please for intimates, and among so many you certainly will find some agreeable, amiable companions. For a week we sat down at the table every day with 60 or 70 persons, to-day we were all speaking of the latter being very thin because we had only 40. There are as many more at the other boarding house, continually going and coming, and now there is scarcely 10 persons here that were here when we came. We went last week to _Lake George_, about 40 miles from here,—made up a party and went on Tuesday, breakfasted at _Saratoga_, where the Springs formerly most celebrated were, and dined about 14 miles this side the lake, at the most beautiful place I ever saw. Perhaps you have heard of Glens-Falls; they are said to exceed in _beauty_ the Falls of _Niagara_—tho’ in _sublimity_ must fall far short. I never imagined anything so picturesque, sublime and beautiful as the scenery around this enchanting place. The rocks on the shores have exactly the appearance of elegant, magnificent ruins, they are entirely of _slate_, and seem piled in regular forms with shrubs and grass growing in between. I looked around me for an hour and I every moment discovered something new to admire,—nothing could exceed the beautiful variety of the scenery. I left this elegant place with painful regret. About sunset we came in view of the _Lake_, it is a most beautiful sheet of water, Morse says 36 miles long and from one to 7 broad, full of beautiful Islands, 365 in all and of every size and shape. It is surrounded by very high hills and mountains rising one above the other in majestic grandeur. In the morning we went out to fish, sailed about 4 miles on the lake to a little Island where we went on shore,—nothing could exceed the beautiful grandeur of the prospect; we anchored off,—I found it very charming fishing, the water so perfectly transparent that we could see the fish swimming around the dock. Our first intention was to sail down the lake to Lake Champlain and visit the ruins of the fortifications at Ticonderoga, but some of our party dissuaded us from it. We saw the ruins of Fort George and the bloody pond—where so many poor wretches were thrown. We stopt on our return at the field where Burgoyne surrendered his army; it is now covered with corn and nothing to distinguish it from the surrounding fields; we returned by a different route, for 10 miles we rode directly on the banks of the Hudson river, nothing could be more delightful, our road wound with the river which was beautifully overhung with trees; we returned here Thursday night, found them dancing. I joined, and the next night we had a ball at the other house; there again I danced till 12 o’clock and the next morning got up quite sick,—to-day I am finely again and have made a resolution not to dance again whilst I stay here. This all think I can’t keep, but they shall see I can. Col. Boyd came here last week but went away while we were gone to Lake George—to Canada I believe.