Here where the Laurentian rocks stand out boldly over the sands of the old Silurian sea, and where the mighty waterways sweep down from the great northern gulf southward, and from the great northwestern lakes eastward, lies Saratoga Springs. These valleys, bearing the waters of Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the upper Hudson on the north, and of the Mohawk River on the west, have been for centuries the great war-paths of the Indians and of civilized nations. If America is not old, at least her maturity is marked in this region by the scars of war, and by the lines of struggle for the sovereignty of the great waterways. Here are veritable ruins,—old Fort Carillon, later “Old Ticonderoga,” Fort Frederick, afterward Crown Point, and traces here and there of the line of forts extending from the Indian carrying-place at Fort Edward down on either bank of the Hudson to old Saratoga, now Schuylerville, where the great monument commemorative of Revolutionary victory marks the national character of that struggle, and where, eight miles below, at Bemis Heights, fourteen granite tablets, each a monument five or six feet in height, mark the fighting-ground. Through the Mohawk Valley are signs of the “Long House” of the Six Nations, of massacres and battles, that tell their story of three centuries. [Illustration: HISTORIC AND OTHER DRIVES IN THE VICINITY OF SARATOGA SPRINGS. BY E. H. WALWORTH.] The story of Saratoga cannot easily be limited to Saratoga Springs, although it has fifteen thousand inhabitants who retain their quaintly rural government and cling to the appellation of “village.” Village though it be, it is imposing with its stately hotels, spacious streets, large business houses, many beautiful villas, fine public halls, handsome churches, and numerous valuable mineral springs; which, like the residences, are set amid magnificent trees, forest pines and cultivated elms that rival the famous trees of New Haven. From the surrounding hills the village seems to nestle in the original wilderness. But it is always active,—in winter with its toboggan slide, snow-shoe club, trotting matches on the ice-bound lake, and snow-bound streets rolled to marble smoothness for gay and luxurious sleigh-riding; in summer, its brilliancy is often compared with that of Paris. In the loss of the old-time social exclusiveness it has gained in cosmopolitan character and in the rich variety of its life and amusements. [Illustration: SARATOGA BATTLE MONUMENT, SCHUYLERVILLE, N. Y.]