Union Hotel should ever perish in the height of the season, with all it contains, the future explorer who might delve in its ruins would come upon the rarest diamond mine the world ever knew. Upon Saratoga Lake is the famous restaurant where "Saratoga chips" were invented and are served, this route being a favorite drive for the people who attend the numerous conventions, for whose use an elaborate Convention Hall has been erected on Broadway, seating five thousand persons. On the western shore of the lake, just where the Kayaderosseras River flows in from Ballston, is pointed out the battlefield on which the legend says that in the days of the warlike Mohawks and fierce Mohicans they had a deadly combat, a thousand warriors being engaged, when suddenly the Great Spirit sent a miraculous white dove over the lake and battlefield, having such an effect that the conflict ceased, their tomahawks fell useless at their feet, and they smoked the calumet of peace. To the northward of Saratoga is the extensive Woodlawn Park, the home of the late Judge Henry Hilton. Ten miles northward is Mount McGregor, rising twelve hundred feet and giving a magnificent view. It was here that General Grant was taken in his last illness in 1885, and the cottage in which he died is now the property of New York State and open to the public. FORT EDWARD. The upper Hudson River has various falls providing good water-power, which are largely availed of by paper-mills. The famous Fort Edward, one of these noted paper-making towns, is but a short distance from Saratoga. The railroad, leading from Saratoga and the south to Lake Champlain and the north, here crosses the Hudson in a region of great historic interest. This was the beginning of the portage in early times between the river and the lake, the railway route following the ancient Indian trail. The two waters are actually connected by the Champlain Canal, and, curiously enough, this makes New England an island, thus realizing the belief of the original explorers. Rev. Robert Cushman, who preached the first sermon before the Massachusetts Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1621, afterwards published it with an introduction describing New England, in which he says: "So far as we can find, it is an island, and near about the quantity of England, being cut out from the mainland in America, as England is from the main of Europe, by a great arm of the sea (Hudson's River) which entereth in forty degrees and runneth up northwest and by west, and goeth out either into the South Sea (Pacific Ocean) or else into the Bay of Canada (Gulf of St. Lawrence)." There can still be seen at Fort Edward traces of the ramparts of the old fort commanding the portage, which was held and fought for in the eighteenth century. Originally a noble domain around it of one thousand square miles was granted to "our loving subject, the Reverend Godfridius Dellius, Minister of the Gospell att our city of Albany," for "the annual rent of one Raccoon