This war was a prelude to the French and Indian, or Seven Years’ War, which, with its five campaigns, raged continuously through the war-worn valley of the grand northern waterways. Nearly a century and a half of struggle, first of the French discoverers and missionaries with the savages, and then of the Frenchmen and Iroquois, and later the French, the Indians, and the English, had proved the importance of this valley as the northern doorway to the country. Of the three expeditions first planned to be sent simultaneously against the French—one under Braddock against Fort Duquesne, another under Shirley against Niagara, and another under Johnson against Crown Point,—the third was considered the most important. In August, Major-General William Johnson took command in person and pushed on to the outlet of Lake George, intending to build a fort at Ticonderoga as a defence against Crown Point, to which the French had extended their possessions in the last interval of peace. Before his design could be accomplished, desperate warfare disturbed the placid waters of the beautiful lakes and so discolored their outlying waters that time has not yet effaced the name of “Bloody Pond.” Abercrombie’s campaign in 1758 was a fatal mistake. The brilliant hope inspired by his fine army of Regulars with their splendid accoutrements, his thousands of boats paraded on the broad lake with banners flying and strains of music unknown in the wilderness, was turned to gloom when a few days later the boats returned laden with the dead and dying, and carrying the body of the beloved Lord Howe. Again, in 1759, the war-trail of old Saratoga was trodden by an English army, twelve thousand strong, under the command of the successful Lord Amherst. In the autumn the final conflict came when the death of Wolfe signalled the triumph of England, and the great waterways passed under the sovereignty of the Anglo-Saxons. [Illustration: CONGRESS SPRING IN 1820.] For some years, Sir William Johnson suffered from the effects of a wound received in the hip during the war. In 1767, his Indian friends told him about the “Great Medicine Waters” of Saratoga, and carried him by boat and on a stretcher to the mysterious spring. The waters proved so beneficial that he was able to return over the “carrying-place” unaided and on foot. The waters which he drank were taken from the High Rock Spring of Saratoga Springs. Once they overflowed the cone-like rock through which they now rise and from which they are dipped, and the rock was gradually deposited and formed by the overflow. The process has lately been repeated by new springs like the Geyser and the Champion, which for some years threw the water several feet into the air, leaving a heavy cascade-like deposit about the opening. Gradually the waters subsided, the geyser effect was lost, and like the High Rock Spring they have fallen below the level of the ground.