Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/80

 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