In considering the story of Saratoga, we cannot confine our attention to the town of Saratoga Springs, with its sharply defined boundaries and rectangular lines of political division which mark the limit of the voters for supervisor at the annual town-meeting. But if we include the county in our narrative, then, indeed, may we recall the vision which presents the individuality of the name Saratoga. For Saratoga County is outlined by a great eastward and southern sweep of the Hudson River for seventy miles from its narrow gorge at Luzerne, where the wild savage chief of colonial days leaped across the mighty river to escape his pursuing foe, down over the precipitous Palmer’s Falls, and over the cavern-haunted Glen’s Falls, and onward to old Fort Edward, where its waters turn shortly to the south and pursue their troubled way along the “hillside country,” which received here its Indian name, “Se-rach-ta-gue,” which means “hillside country of the great river.” It is also said that in the Indian language Sa-ragh-to-ga means the “place of the swift water,” in allusion to the rapids and falls that are in contrast with the “still water” a few miles below. Thence the Hudson flows on until it receives the four sprouts or mouths of the Mohawk River, which spreads out from the precipitous falls at Cohoes. This great intersecting western valley separates the northern from the southern highlands of New York, and is, like the great northern valley, a natural highway and thoroughfare. In the angle formed by the junction of these two long, deep valleys or passes through the mountain ranges, “in the angle between the old Indian war-trails, in the angle between the pathways of armies, in the angle between the great modern routes of travel, in the angle formed by the junction of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers,” is Saratoga County, the Saratoga of history and romance. Not only the stealthy tread of the Iroquois sped over these hills, not only the swift canoe of the Algonquin shot over these streams, but also the disciplined armies of France and of England marched and countermarched, fought by day and bivouacked at night on this ground, from the time that Hendrick Hudson opened the lower valley of the Hudson River, and Samuel Champlain discovered the broad lake that bears his name, until the Revolutionary period closed.