We pushed across the Hudson to the upper mouth or "sprout" of the Mohawk, anu, gliding under the rail-road bridge and along a sluice of the Champlain Canal, clambered up a high bank, and reached the packet office at Waterford * toward noon. The suppressed roar of Cohoes' Falls, two miles distant, wooed us to the pleasures of that fashionable resort, to while away the three hours before the arrival of the canal packet. These falls, though not so grand as many others either in volume or altitude of cataract, or in the natural scenery around, nevertheless present many points of beauty and sublimity exceedingly attractive to the tourist. The Mohawk is here more than one hundred yards wide, and perfectly rock-ribbed on both sides. The fall is nearly seventy feet perpendicular, in addition to the turbulent rapids above and below. A bridge, eight hundred feet long, spans the river half a mile below the falls, from which a fine view may be obtained of the whole scene. Before entering the Hudson, the river is divided into four mouths or _sprouts_, as they are called, by three rocky islands, Haver's, Van Schaick's or Cohoes', and Green's or Tibbetts's Islands, which form a scene that is singularly picturesque. It is generally supposed that Henry Hudson, the discoverer of the river bearing his name, ascended as far as this point in 1609, and that he and his boat's crew were the first white men who beheld the cataract of Cohoes. The mouth of the Mohawk was a point of much interest toward the close of the summer of 1777, when Van Schaick's Island was fortified by General Schuyler, then in command of the northern division of the Continental army. Properly to understand the position of affairs at that period, it is necessary to take a brief view of events immediately antecedent to, and intimately connected with, the military operations at this point, and at Stillwater a few weeks later.