The sun., 1909-06-30
The Saratoga Battlefield.

Among the thousands who pass
through the upper Hudson Valley to
the shores Of Lake Champlain during
the next few days OF celebration a
handful, not more, will wander far
enough from the beaten track to visit
the battlefield Of Saratoga. For these
few curious, impelledby a desire long out
Of date, there will await an experience
at once strange and not without its
sense Of regret-for of all the fields Of
war in the varied history of our nation
none has been more famous or more
forgotten than this field of Saratoga.
1T is well,' said a celebrated French
traveller of the late eighteenth century
1T is we'll when you are talking with
the British to be able to say, at certain
time, have seen Saratoga" In the
days that followed fast upon the Rev.
olution no foreigner omitted to visit
Saratoga. For several generations, while
the memories of the survivors were
still fresh, it was place of patriotic
pilgrimage Of national appeal. Then
the several blows of fate descended.
First the name was taken away and
bestowed upon the hustling pleasure
resort miles away. Next the railroad
came UP the valley and turned aside,
leaving the field remote and inaccessi-
bic, and at last the civil war turned all
attention and all patriotic fervor toward
other battlefelds and fresher pages of
history.
There is gain and loss in this neglect
The visitor this week who provides him
self with the field map of BURGoYNEs s
engineer, published with BURGoYNEs
unhappy defence to Parliament 80 long
ago, will find a perfectly ineligible
guide to contemporary geography, the
brooks, the hills, the fields. the slopes
he will find there all these, all perfectly
responding to the drafting of l32 years
ago. A farmhouse here, cultivated
patch there-these may replace wood
land-but only in the Champlain Canal
at the foot of the heights will he find an
imposing or significant evidence of the
devastation incident to the long con-
tinued operation of man in this region.
y In that narrow area within which the
decisive phases Of the Saratoga drama
were enacted, strip stretching for two
miles between Bemis Heights and VIII
bur's Basin, and for two miles more
inland to Nelson's farm and Burgoyne's
hill, the visitor will find it possible
only with the faded map Of poor JOHN
BUhooYNE to trace the ebb and flow
Of the tides Of invasion and retreat, to
mark with accuracy or satisfaction the
spot which after all, like the similar
point at Gettysburg, must be identified
ss the high water mark of an invasion
The few stray stones, with already
wasting inscriptions, usually inaccur-
ately located and always inconclu-
sively inscribed, are but irritations in
the pathway Of the visitor.
To one who has visited battlefield
of the civil war, has seen the forest of
monuments and the underground Of
stones. nothing can be more impress
sive, more astounding than the neglect
Of Saratoga. II he climb the hill south
of Wilbur's Basin and plunge into the
t.ndergrowth his foot will presently be
tangled in a shallow ditch; pausing TO
examine II, he will recognize shallow
bank behind, running now straight and
now with curve, the last remnant of
the advance line of BURGoYNE, the only
surviving evidence Of those ntrench-
ments behind which he lay waiting for