Montreal, Quebec, is almost directly north of Schenectady, a distance of about 225 miles. The route includes the world renowned Saratoga Springs and skirts the western shore of historic Lake Champlain. Between Schenectady and Ballston (16 miles) the first commercial single-phase alternating current railway system was put into service August 17th, this year, on the Schenectady Railway Company's Ballston division and has since been in regular operation. The entire equipment was designed and built by the General Electric Company, and the commercial possibilities of the system are largely due to the fact that the motors operate with alternating current power outside of city limits, and with direct current power within city limits.
Saratoga is 22 miles by electric car from Schenectady via Ballston. Tradition says that the Indians, to whom we owe the name "Saratoga," first discovered the medicinal values of the waters of the locality, and led the white man thither. There are now as many as thirty-five separate mineral springs which furnish water of widely different compositions for table and medicinal use. Natural carbonic acid gas, from a vein discovered some years ago, is here compressed and shipped in steel tanks. The curative powers of the waters have attracted health seekers from all over the world, and the city of to-day, with its beautiful parks and boulevards, its great hotels and its famous race course, owes its origin to the natural mineral springs.
[Photo: United States Hotel, Saratoga, N. Y.: original size (8K) | 9x enlarged (51K)]
The present United States Hotel, located in the center of the town, was erected in 1874. The building and its court cover seven acres of ground.
Lake George, with its beauties scarcely equalled by those of the Italian Lakes, is not far away to the north, and some of the most attractive of the Adirondack Lakes and Mountains are within a few miles' ride.
Leaving Saratoga, the night train crosses the Hudson River at Ft. Edward, passing east of Lake George and through Whitehall on its way north. Threading the neck of land at the southern end of Lake Champlain at old Fort Ticonderoga - the historic gate between the Hudson River and the great northern waterways - and following the western shore of this lake, through Crown Point, Port Henry, and Plattsburg, it crosses the international frontier just beyond Rouse's Point and shortly arrives at Montreal.
[Photo of unidentified tree-lined street - perhaps Saratoga?: original size (6K) | 9x enlarged (34K)]
[Map of Route from Schenectady to Montreal: original size (23K) | 9x enlarged (92K)]
