ALBANY.

brated for their medicinal virtues. The Congress spring is the most noted. Its waters in great quantities are bottled and sent into various parts of the Union. It is a place of great resort

during the summer season, for invalids and fashionables. Few visit them without improving their health and spirits. Steam boats in a few hours, carry passengers from New York to Albany, from whence rail road cars, with increased speed, convey

them to the springs, where they find excellent accommodations, and company in every variety. The town of Saratoga is memorable as being the place where the first British army under General Burgoyne, consisting of six thousand men, surrendered to General Gates, October 17th, 1777.

The most important river in the eastern section of the state, is the Hudson. It rises in the mountainous country, near lake Champlain, and is joined by the Mohawk from the west at

AARON BURR.

Waterford; from whence it bears on its waters the produce of the north and the west, to the city of New York. În passing

through the Highlands, which rise abruptly fifteen hundred feet from the river, it presents a scenery highly picturesque.

A number of thriving towns are pleasantly situated on the river between New York and Albany; among which are Newburg, Poughkeepsie, Catskill, and Hudson.

AARON BURR. New York was, for a considerable period, the principal theatre of the political schemes of Aaron Burr. He began his career in the city with high prospects; few persons exceeded him in talents, and none in a total want of political integrity. He was early placed by the legislature of the state in the senate of the United States, where he distinguished himself as the champion of opposition to federalism. In selecting candidates for the presidency of 1801, the parties were so nearly balanced, that a perfect union on their respective candidates was deemed necessary. The object of the republicans was to elect Mr. Jefferson; and to secure the co-operation of New York, it was necessary to take Burr as his second. The constitution then required the electoral votes to be given indiscriminately, for two candidates, for president and vice president, without designating the office designed for each. Jefferson and Burr had an equal and the highest vote, which devolved the duty on the house of representatives of designating one of the two for the presidency. Jefferson was the favorite of the republicans. Few persons of either party wished Burr to be president. He was able by intrigue to hold the choice of the house of representatives in check until the thirty-fifth ballot, which eventuated in giving the first office to Mr. Jefferson, and the second to Mr. Burr.

It soon became evident that Burr's political career in relation

AARON BURR.

to the general government, must terminate with his vice presidency; and thereupon he caused himself to be set up for the office of governor of the state of New York. Mr. Hamilton, a distinguished federalist, who had retired from public life, and was then an eminent counsellor in the city, expressed an opinion in a private letter to a friend, that Burr was an unsafe person to be trusted with the office to which he was aspiring. This letter, contrary to the wishes, and without any agency of its author, found its way into a newspaper, and was made the occasion of a challenge from Burr to Hamilton, eventuating in the death of the latter. Burr absented himself from public view, for a short time. A bill of indictment was found against him, by a grand jury in the state of New Jersey, for the murder; it having taken place at Hoboken, in that state. This bill has slept on the files of that court to the present time. At the next session of Congress, he appeared in the chair of the senate, and presided over the deliberations in the trial of the impeachment of Judge Chase, one of the associate justices of the supreme court of the United States. The only point on which federalists and republicans ever united, was in a cordial hatred to Aaron Burr. His ambition by no means terminated with his office.

He calculated that the federalists and the disappointed expectants of office under Mr. Jefferson, would form a majority, by which he could overturn the government and place himself at the head of the nation. He found few or no advocates of this scheme. His next was to separate the valley of the Mississippi from the Atlantic states, and form an independent empire, of which he should be head, and New Orleans the capital. For this project he found a number of advocates, and was able to raise considerable funds. Subordinate, and as a kind of a cloak for his military preparations, and as a final resort, was the project of joining the disaffected in Mexico, and wresting that province from Spain. He had strong hopes of corrupting general Wil. kinson, commander of the United States troops, and engaging him and the army in his views. He failed, also in this project; his enlistments and preparations progressed slowly. Mr. Jeffergon closely watched his proceedings, and caused him to be arrested and examined before a court in Kentucky, where he was discharged for want of proof. A similar proceeding terminated in the same manner before a court in the Mississippi territory. Burr fled into the wilderness, and was again arrested in the neighborhood of Fort Stoddard, and conducted under a military escort to Richmond, where he was tried in the summer of 1807, on a charge of high treason, before chief justice Marshall. The treason specified in the indictment was, levying war against the United States by assembling a military force at Blannerhassett's island in the Ohio river, nearly opposite Marietta. Burr was several hundred miles distant from that place at the

time the treason was alleged to have been committed, collecting materials for some of his enterprizes, but without any definite object. After several months spent in the trial, judge Marshall decided that Burr could not be criminally chargeable with the conduct of other persons, until the principals had been convicted, and excluded the testimony relied upon for the support of the prosecution. The jury returned a verdict that he was not proved guilty by any testimony before them. He was then bound over for trial for a misdemeanor before a court in Ohio; this prosecution was abandoned, and all further criminal process against him ceased. After this career, he returned to what he called "the dull pursuits of civil life," in the practice of law in the city of New York. He died on the 14th of September, 1836, in the eighty-first year of his age.

NEW JERSEY. New Jersey is a peninsula between the waters of New York bay and the Hudson river on the east, and Delaware bay and river on the west; one hundred and sixty three miles in length, and fifty in breadth. It contains seven thousand five hundred square miles, and 373,306 inhabitants; fifty to the square mile. Number of militia, thirty-nine thousand one hundred and seventy-one. Its constitution was formed July 24, 1776, while it was a province of Great Britain. It provides that the government of the province shall be vested in a governor, legislative council, and general assembly. The council and assembly to be chosen annually by the people, and the governor and judges, by the council and assembly in joint meeting. The governor to hold his office one year, and the judges seven. The governor has also the powers of a chancellor.

EDUCATION. Princeton college is a flourishing institution, founded in 1746, under the government of a board of twentythree trustees, of whom the governor for the time being is president. One half the members must be clergymen; number of students, two hundred and seven. A theological seminary for the education of ministers for the presbyterian church, was established at Princeton in 1812, having twelve instructors, and one hundred and thirteen students. Rutger's college was established at New Brunswick in 1770. It has eleven instructors, and eighty-two students.

Until a recent period, common school education has been greatly neglected in New Jersey. At a public meeting of the friends of education, in 1828, a committee was appointed to prepare and publish information relating to schools, and the condition of the people as to common education. That committee reported eleven thousand seven hundred and forty-two children entirely destitute of instruction, and fifteen thousand adults who are unable to read; and that in many towns more than one half of the children never attended any school. The agent employ

CANALS AND RAIL ROADS. CHIEF TOWNS.

ed by the American Bible society in distributing Bibles, reported that in eighteen families which he visited, none of the members could read. These facts collected and published, awakened the attention of the people to this subject.

In 1829, a law was passed appropriating $20,000 in small sums, to such towns as would raise another sum equal to that appropriated to them for the support of schools. A permanent school fund has also been provided. The amount of the school fund in 1841, exceeded $336,000. There are 1400 school districts in the state. The census of 1840, reports 6,385 white persons over twenty years of age, unable to read or write. The recent exertions of the people of New Jersy in behalf of the cause of education are highly commendable.

CANALS AND RAIL ROADS. New Jersey being the great thoroughfare between New York and Philadelphia, much exertion has been made to facilitate the intercourse between these capitals. A canal for sloop navigation, of seventy feet width and seven feet depth of water, from the Raritan near New Brunswick to the Delaware at Trenton, has been completed; length forty-three miles; estimated cost $2,500,000. This canal is owned by the Camden and Amboy rail road company, who have made a rail road from Amboy to Camden, opposite Philadelphia, a distance of sixty miles, bringing the cities of New York and Philadelphia with the present speed within seven hours of each other. The whole distance both by land and water is run by steam; to what extent the speed may be increased remains yet to be ascertained. Several other rail roads are projected to facilitate the intercourse between different parts of the state, and with their principal marts, the cities of New York and Philadelphia. The Morris canal, extending from Jersey city, a village opposite New York, to Delaware river at Easton, where it unites with the Lehigh canal, is an enterprize of the citizens of New York, designed to facilitate the transportation of coal directly from the mines to that city. Its length is one hundred miles; rise and fall one thousand six hundred and fifty seven feet, two hundred and twenty-three of which are overcome by twenty-four locks, and the residue by twenty-three inclined planes. Commenced in 1825; estimated cost $1,000,000. The Paterson and Hudson rail road, from Jersey city to Paterson, is sixteen miles; the Camden and Woodbury, nine miles; the New Jersey, from Jersey city to Brunswick, is thirtyfour miles; the Trenton and New Brunswick, twenty-seven miles; the Morris and Essex, from Newark to Morristown, is twenty-two miles; and the Elizabethport and Somerville, is twenty-five miles.

CHIEF TOWNS. This state, though bordering upon navigable water three hundred miles, has no port, and no large cities.