The colonel, as he was then called, had built a house near Albany, in the English taste, comparatively magnificent, where his family resided, and where he carried on the business of his department. Thirty miles or more above Albany, in the direction of the Flats, and near the far-famed Saratoga, which was to be the scene of his future triumph, he had another establishment. It was here that the colonel’s political and economical genius had full scope. He had always the command of a great number of those workmen who were employed in public buildings, &c. Those were always in constant pay—it being necessary to engage them in that manner; and were, from the change of seasons, the shutting of the ice, and other circumstances, months unemployed. All these seasons, when public business was interrupted, the workmen were employed in constructing squares of buildings in the nature of barracks, for the purpose of lodging artisans and labourers of all kinds. Having previously obtained a large tract of very fertile lands from the crown, on which he built a spacious and convenient house; he constructed those barracks at a distance, not only as a nursery for the arts which he meant to encourage, but as the materials of a future colony, which he meant to plant out around him. He had here a number of negroes well acquainted with felling of trees and managing saw-mills, of which he erected several. And while these were employed in carrying on a very advantageous trade of deals and lumber, which were floated down on rafts to New-York, they were at the same time clearing the ground for the colony the colonel was preparing to establish.