In coming to Fort Edward, the Hudson River sweeps around a grand curve
from the west towards the south, much of its course over cascades and
down rapids that are lined with mills. In a mile it descends eighty
feet, these rapids being known as Baker's Falls, and just above is the
village of Sandy Hill, having in its centre a pleasant elm-shaded
green. Here was enacted a tragedy, in some respects rivalling the tale
of Pocahontas. A party of sixteen, carrying supplies to Lake George,
was surprised and captured by Indians, and taken to the trunk of a
fallen tree on the spot where is now the village green, bound by
hickory withes and seated in a row. The savages then began at the end
of the row and tomahawked them one after another until only two
remained, Lieutenant McGinnis commanding the party and a young
teamster named Quackenboss. The tomahawk was brandished over the
former, when he threw himself backward and tried to break his bonds. A
dozen tomahawks instantly gleamed over him, and lying on his back he
defended himself with his heels, but he was soon hacked to death.
Quackenboss alone remained, and the deadly hatchet was raised over his
head, when suddenly the arm of the savage was seized by a squaw, who
cried, "You shall not kill him; he no fighter; he my dog." They spared
him to become a beast of burden. Staggering under a pack of plunder
almost too heavy to carry, they marched him towards Canada, the
Indians bearing his companions' scalps as trophies. They sailed along
Lake Champlain in canoes, and at the first Indian village at which
they halted he was compelled to "run the gauntlet." He ran between
rows of savages armed with heavy clubs, who beat him, an ordeal in
which he was severely injured. The Indian woman, however, took him to
her wigwam, bound up his wounds, and carefully nursed him until he
recovered. He was ultimately ransomed, obtaining employment in
Montreal. Finally returning to his home, he lived to a ripe old age,
telling of his adventures until he died in 1820.
Following the curving Hudson River bank around to the westward,
another series of rapids and cascades is ascended to the thriving
manufacturing town of Glen's Falls. This magnificent cataract pours
through a wild ravine having over seventy feet descent, the water
flowing upon rough masses of black marble composing the rocky terraces
the stream has broken down. The Mohicans had significant names for
this famous cataract. One was Kayandorossa, meaning the "long deep
hole," applied to the ravine; and another, Che-pon-tuc, or "hard
climbing; a difficult place to get around." Along the north side of
the ravine, upon a beautiful plain, is the manufacturing settlement of
about ten thousand people, who use the admirable water-power and get
the black marble out of adjacent quarries. Vast numbers of logs coming
down the Hudson are gathered in a boom above the town, and sawmills
cut them into lumber. Paper-mills cluster about the falls, and
marble-saws work up the black rocks. In the centre of the ravine,
above the falls, a cavern is hewn where a rocky islet makes a rude
abutment for a bridge pier. Father Jogues, who came over from Lake
George in 1645, was the first white man who saw this attractive
region, and he wrote that the Indians then called the Hudson
"Oi-o-gue" or "the beautiful river," while the Hollanders, settled on
it farther down, had named it the "river Van Maurice." When the Dutch
made their first explorations they found that the lower Mohawk and the
upper valley of the Hudson, with the country northward extending into
the Adirondacks, was the home of the Mohicans, an Algonquin tribe, and
always at war with the Mohawks, their western neighbors higher up that
valley. It was thought probable that with a view of securing
assistance in this inveterate feud, the Mohicans received the Dutch
settlers so amicably and gave them lands.
James Fenimore Cooper located around Glen's Falls the scene of his
novel, the _Last of the Mohicans_, in which _Hawkeye_, looking out of
the cavern in the ravine, gives his admirable description of the
cataract as it appeared in the French and Indian War, before the
millwright had come along to disturb the scenery. "Ay," he said,
"there are the falls on two sides of us, and the river above and
below. If you had daylight it would be worth the trouble to step up on
the height of this rock and look at the perversity of the water. It
falls by no rule at all; sometimes it leaps, sometimes it tumbles;
there it skips; here it shoots; in one place 'tis as white as snow,
and in another 'tis as green as grass; hereabouts it pitches into deep
hollows that rumble and quake the 'arth, and thereaway it ripples and
sings like a brook, fashioning whirlpools and gullies in the old stone
as if 'twere no harder than trodden clay. The whole design of the
river seems disconnected. First it runs smoothly as if meaning to go
down the descent as things were ordered; then it angles about and
faces the shores; nor are there places wanting where it looks
backward, as if unwilling to leave the wilderness to mingle with the
salt!"