i? i i * ^ !^'^"^^>^'^^ • i^-«._^j %ahc (3coroe in Ibistor^ BY ELIZABETH EGGLESTON SEELYE AUTHOR OF THE STORY OF WASHINGTON, THE STORY OF COLUMBL'S, THE LIFE OF TECUMSEH, THE LIFE OF POCAHONTAS, THE LIFE OF BRANT AND RED JACKET, THE LIFE OF MONTEZUMA, ETC, TWELFTH EDITION PUBLISHED BY ELWYN SEELYE LAKE GEORGE, N. Y. Copyright, 1896, 1897, By ELIZABETH EGGLESTON SEELYE F /^^ CONTENT S.G-S^'^b !^^T PACK A great water pathway 1 The niakiug of Lake George ^ The Indians of Lake George 3 The discovery of Lake George 4 The naming of Lake George i) Lake George a warpath 11 A canoe expedition 12 The path of peace messengers 13 The English advance to Lake George 14 The French at Ticonderoga 16 The march on Fort Edward 17 Tlie bloody morning scout 20 The battle of Lake George '^3 The Bloody Pond fight -^ Baron Dieskau's danger "-iO Holding Lake George 30 Scouting on Lake George 35 A winter attack on Fort William Henry ^.0 Montcalm on Lake George 43 The siege of Fort William Henry 48 The fall of Fort William Henry 58 The massacre of Lake George 60 The battle of Rogers' Rock 70 Rollers' slide 73 The battle of Ticonderoga 75 Putnam's adventure 84 Last scenes of the French war about Lake George . . 88 Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga 0~ Benjamin Franklin on Lake George 94 Burgoyne in control of Lake George 96 The Battle of Diamond Island 100 Early visitors at Lnke George . . . . • . . .103 Points of historic interest on and about Lake George 104 ill 957385 LAKE GEOEGE IN HISTOEY. A GREAT WATER PATHWAY. Lake George a^'d Lake Champlain are two great links between the waters of the St. Law- rence system and the Hudson River. Before the invention of the railway nothing- could be more important than such a water route. Until the interminable forests had been cleared and roads built there was no other means of travers- ing- the continent, and even then the waterwaj-s remained the only practicable route for moving cannon, heavy stores and merchandise, while man himself could travel much more easily, cheaply and swiftly by ^^•ater. Here then for untold ages Indian war parties came and went. At this gateway between two lands English and French struggled for the pos- session of a continent. Here England descended upon her rebellious colonies and strove to cut them in twain; and here the sturdy northern farmers first showed their power to resist the veteran troops of the Old World. 1 Before the building of the Champlain canal an infant trade flowed through these waters, and travelers sought this route between the United States and Canada. xSo part of the country is richer in historical interest; no other American waters have seen so many armies pass up and down them, gay with the brilliant costumes of an old world and a past age. THE MAKING OF LAKE GEORGE. Lake George lies at the eastern edge of the Adirondack mountain system, which is one of the oldest on our continent, being formed of ancient rock which rose above the sea long be- fore the most of North America ceased to be ocean floor. The rains and frosts of immensely long ages have very much reduced the height of these mountains and worn them down to their present rounded outlines. It is a curious fact that Lake George, the south- ern end of which is almost enclosed in a loop of the Hudson, should empty its waters into the St. Lawrence. Dr. G. Frederick Wright has recently discovered that before the Glacial Age Lake George did not exist. The original watershed of the St. Lawrence and the Hudson rivers he finds to lie across the Narrows of Lake George; and here two streams took their rise, one of which ran northward to Lake Champlain and the other southward through Dunham's Bay to the Hudson. During the Glacial Age the face of this country was covered with a slowly moving sheet of ice to the height of some thousands of feet, which carved and shaped the bed of Lake George, and deposited as it melted, great quantities of sand and gravel, or clay, both to the north of Baldwin, where one stream had formerly found its way into Lake Champlain, and at the head of Dunham's Bay marsh, where the other had taken its course to join the Hudson. These hills of glacial drift dammed back the waters of the brawling mountain brooks and made a lake of what was once a rugged valley — a lake which found its only outlet across the rocks at Ticonderoga. THE INDIANS OF LAKE GEORGE. Lake George and Lake Champlain, forming a natural warpath between the St. Lawrence and the Hudson, the shores of Lake George were not a safe dwelling place for savages, and it is prob- able that for ages they had seen few inhabitants other than an occasional group of famished fisher- men who sought such spots as Dunham's Bay Creek, in the spring, to spear the myriads of fish which flocked to its warmer water during the spawning season. As far back as we know the Iroquois Indians held undisputed sway on these w^aters, and by means of them made their warlike descents upon the natives of Canada, Other savages only ven- tured on Lake George to steal into the country of the Iroquois to deal them some revengeful blow. The Iroquois, or Five Nations, were a confed- eracy of Indian peoples of one race, whose vil- lag-es lay in a line across Ncav York State from the mouth of the Mohawk River to Lake Erie. Unlike many other tribes, they fortified their towns with some skill and did not depend on the hinit alone for food, but raised corn, which they bip' ^ for use in the Winter. They were invet- erate warriors and they had attained perhaps as great a degree of advancement as wf 3 possible on a continent where, north of Mexico, th,«re were no spots in which an infant civilization might develop in comparative freedom from war- like inroads. Situated where they commanded the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence, Lake George and Lake Champlain, the Mohawk and the Hudson, a vast system of natural water courses, the ter- ror of their inroads was felt in the Ohio Valley, among the Indians of Illinois, in Canada, and so far eastward that the natives of New England drew in close to the seaboard, shudderingly tell- ing their white neighbors, " Mohog (Mohawk) all devil." THE DISCOVERY OF TAKE GEORGE. Champlain, the typical soldier-explorer of his day, a man whose gaze was fixed on the dawn of a great commercial age, seeking in the w^ater courses of North America for a western route to China and the spice islands of the Orient, nar- rowly missed being the discoverer of Lake George. During the first year after the founding of Quebec, having heard from the Indians of a lake o e if ► "t ■ ^ 1 * ■ -SU pi of great size and beauty, in which were many fair islands, he joined .' war party of Canadian In- dians, bent on attacking" the Mohawks in their home on the river of that name. To the Indians Lake Georg-e and Lake Champlain were one, the latter " the door of the country," and the former, Andiatorocte, or, " there the water closes," an allusion to the falls in the stream of the outlet, around which the\' were obliged to carry their canoes. It ha^^pened that the Canadian Indians were met on Lake Champlain by an Iroquois war party, where the battle took place instead of on the Mohawk, and Lake George remained unknown for thirty-two years longer, when it was the lot of Father Jogues, a suffering and captive Jesuit, and two young Frenchmen, his disciples, to be the first white men to look upon this beautiful sheet of water. Thouglf the French excelled in the manage- ment of the Indians, it chanced that by their friendly alliance with the natives of Canada the}' found themselves embroiled with the most power- ful savages on the continent. The Iroquois, who had first fled in terror from the firearms of Champlain, had- bided their time, and when by their trade with the Dutch at Albany they had become possessed of a number of these desirable engines of war, the more western Iroquois fell with redoubled fury upon the Indians of Lake Huron, while the Mohawks glided up the Hudson, Lake George and Lake Champlain to destroy the French border settlements, or lay in wait along the shores of the St. Lawrence to cut off French trade with the Hiirons. On a morning- in the August of 1642 such a war party ambushed twelve canoes making- their way up the St. Lawrence, deeply laden with ammuni- tion, guns, kettles, blankets, hatchets and such articles as Indians prized and bought with their beaver skins. There was a short fig-ht, a flig-ht and a pursuit. Twenty out of fortj^ of the fugi- tives were captured, and among them was Father Jogues, a gentle Jesuit priest, fated to be the unwilling discoverer of Lake George. He had already been on manj^ perilous mis- sions to the Indians of Canada, living in their filthy, smoky huts, trudging, half-starved and nearly frozen from village to village, hated and suspected as an " okie " who might bring disease and ruin with his mysterious incantations, often threatened with the tomahaw^k, yet patiently going where his superior ordered him. He was thirty-five years old, with slight and delicate features, and the tastes of a scholar, though he was an enduring runner and could outstrip most Indians in this exercise. With him were two young lay assistants. Couture and Goupil, bound, like him, to the countr3' of the Hurons on painful missionary labors. Couture had at first made his escape to the rushes on the shore, and Joques might have fol- lowed him, but the priest had given himself up W'hen he saw Goupil a captive, and Couture did the same oii discovering that the good father was in the hands of the savag-es, not, however, until he had first killed an Indian who snapped a g-un at his breast. In revenge for this act the enraged Mohawks gnawed his fingers and pulled out his finger nails with their teeth; and when Father Jogues fell upon his friend's neck, at the sight of his sufferings, they treated him to the same tortures. After knocking in the head a Huron Indian who was disabled from walking, but whom Father Jogues did not fail to baptize with his mangled hands, the triumphant Indians made their way up the Richelieu River and Lake Champlain, the prisoners suffering greatly by the way from heat, wounds and mosquitoes. At the southern end of Lake Champlain they fell in with another war party coming northward, and here on an island the prisoners were made to run the gauntlet between two rows of fiendishly jo;,;)us savages, who beat them with clubs and thorny sticks that they might not fail of success in their coming raid for want of this ceremony. In a woful plight Father Jogues labored across the carrying place at Ticonderoga and cast sad eyes on the lovely stretches of Lake George. The ijarty hastened up the lake, left their boats at its head, somewhere near -where Fort William Henry afterwards stood, and took their way to their home on the Mohawk. Here the captives were carried in triumph from town to town, running the gauntlet at each fresh stop- ping place — " a narrow road to Paradise," the 8 g-ood father called it — and underg-oing- various tortures ironically known as " caresses " among- the Indians. The ceremonies of the Frenchmen's relig-ion excited the superstitious fears of the savag-es and they tomahawked Goupil for making the sign of the cross on the forehead of a child. Couture they adopted because they admired him for his courage in shooting his man at the mo- ment of his capture; but for Father Joques, who could not hunt, who would not eat the meat over which they had performed a heathen ceremony and who spent his time in efforts to secretly bap- tize dying infants, or victims at the stake, they had no use, and his life was in constant danger. Once he only escaped a summary death in revenge for the rumored loss of a war party by his ab- sence at a small body of water, probably Sara- toga Lake, where he and the half-famished In- dian family with which he lived sometimes sub- sisted on frogs and the entrails of fish. He was hurried back to the Mohawk, where his life was only saved by the safe arrival of the war party before him. At last after a year of captivity he accompanied the Indians on a trading expedition to Albany and here kind Dutch people persuaded him to escape, hiding him first in a vessel in the river and then in a garret and finally paying the In- dians a large ransom for him. THE NA3IING OF LAKK GEORGE. Father Jog-ues made Iiis way back to France, where he was caressed by g-reat ladies of the court and the Queen kissed his mangled hands. But he returned to his labors in Canada, and in 1646 when it was rumored that the Iroquois wished to make peace with that country, he, who knew their language, was sent again into the land of the Mohawks, with some presents for these people. Father Jogues accepted this dan- gerous errand as his duty, and accompanied by some Algonquin Indians, he ascended Lake Cham- plain once more and crossed the portage at Ticon- deroga to Lake George. There on a June day the party might be seen swiftly paddling up the lake, differing in no way from the war parties of past ages except for the refined face of the black-robed priest and the lading of European goods which Jogues carried by way of a peace offering. They reached the head of Lake George on the eve of the church holiday' known as Corpus Christi; and for this reason Father Jogues named the lovely lake of his discovery Lac St. Sacrement, or Lake of the Holy Sacrament; and this name it retained for more than a hundred jears, in the mouths of English as well as French. At the head of the lake Father Jogues and his companions left their canoes and carrying their peace otTerings on their backs to the Hudson they borrowed canoes at an Indian fishing village on this river and descended 10 it to the Mohawk towns. Thej' found that there were two parties among the Mohawks, one of which wished for peace and one was determined on war. Jog-ues was soon in imminent danger from tlie latter party. Friendly- Indians warned him to be gone. He had intended, if all were favorable, to found a mission among the Mohawks, and before his departure he left behind him a box containing some useful articles, which he might need if he returned for this purpose. As the Indians were curious he opened the box, and showing them what was in it, locked it again. He then ascended the Hudson and returned to Lake George, where he found his canoes, and so made his way by water back to Canada. Father Jogues had not been long returned when he was ordered by his superior to go back to the ^lohawk country and found a mission, which was to be called " The Mission of the Martj^rs." For the fourth and last time the Jesuit took his way through the waters of Lake George. The Indians had grown suspicious of him. They fancied that the box which he had left among them contained a charm which had caused a worm to eat their corn. A tomahawk ' de- scended on his head one evening as he was enter- ing* an Indian wigwam, where he had been asked to a feast, and thus " the ^Mission of the Martyrs " was sealed with the blood of the gentle discoverer of Lake George. 11 I.AKE GEORGE A TVARPATH. Long- after its discovery hy Father Jogues Lake George remained a war path, peopled only by fleets of canoes propelled by hideously painted savages, stealing forth on their errand of death or hurrying" homeward laden with spoils and trembling captives. During* the seventeenth cen- tury the Iroquois Indians were possessed with a rage for conquest, exterminating or subduing all about them. It was no more than the old barbar- ous drama long- enacted in the western world, a dreary tale of human suffering- and woe, hastened on by the introduction of European fire- arms. New York in time became an Eng-lish province and these fierce warriors were the only barrier be- tween the English and the French, who vied with each other in seeking their trade. North America had ceased to be the resort of romantic soldiers searching- for the gateway to an Old World in the New, and had fallen to the lot of shrewd traders and hardy pioneers. Canada and New^ York both aspired to be the buyers and sellers of the rich furs of the Northwest, and both claimed to own the Iroquois country from Lake George to Lake Erie. So long- as colonies of both France and England remained side by side in the New World every am- bitious scheme of their princes in Europe was cer- tain to throw these infant provinces into war, made doubly ])itter by the savage allies which 12 each sought to set upon the firesides of the other. For seventy years tliere ^^•as strife between the French and Eng-lish in America, broken only by short periods of peace. Again and again was the valley of Lake George the theatre of this struggle between two great peoples for the possession of a continent. A CANOE EXPEDITION. In the summer of 1690 the English made an effort to control the great waterway into Canada, toiling up the Hudson in canoes which must be carried around the falls and rapids, or marching through the unbroken forests on the river bank, their stores loaded upon pack horses, camping at South Bay on Lake Champlain only to fail in the end from the lack of provisions, lack of harmony and the small-pox. Both French, and English were as yet too poor and feeble for grand military in- vasions and the inroad into Canada under the leadership of Peter Schuyler, the next year, was a more possible attempt. Schuyler, a mayor of Al- bany, much loved bj^ the Indians, who called him " Quider," launched a fleet of canoes on Lake George in the summer of 1691, manned with about one hundred and twenty English and Dutch and one hundred and forty ^Mohawks and Mohegans. He ascended Lake George and Lake Champlain, slipped by the French fort of Chambly, on the Richelieu, marched through the woods to La Prairie, opposite Montreal, took twice his number of French by surprise, got the better of them in a cq 13 snort fight, cut down the green corn in the fields and retreated through the woods toward his canoes. The French, however, lay in ambush for him in the forest; Schuyler charged them, drove them from their hiding* place, foug-ht his way through their midst, turned around and drove them back some forty paces over the bodies of the slain and was, to tell the truth, as he said, heartily glad to see them retreat. He finally re- gained his canoes, having left his dead and his flags behind him, but brought off his wTOunded. A few days later found this gallant little band paddling up Lake George, having fought the first fight in this region, which savored but little of In- dian methods of warfare; and well it might since the braves on both sides had nearly all deserted at the outset of the struggle. THE PATH OF PEACE MESSENGERS. In 1698, pluck^' Peter Schuyler and the Dutch dominie at Albany paddled down Lake George on their way to Canada, with news of the Peace of Ryswick, which is the more memorable in this region because the Iroquois lords of these waters ceased from the time to be great conquerors. Deadly wars had much reduced their numbers, they had taken a fresh step in civilization and become shrewd traders, and they were so politic as to see that they gained in importance bj' join- ing neither the English nor the French, being courted l)y both, while they were not without a shrewd suspicion that these eager friends were 14 each casting covetous eyes on their lands. Thus it fell out that Lake George was at peace for the first time, in all probability, for untold ages. THE £NGI.ISH ADVANCE TO LAKE GEORGE. The last French war was the only one of the four to begin in America; the only one in which the disputes of the New World threw the Old into a struggle. English and French interests clashed at many points as well as in the region of Lake George, and it was in a race for the possession of the Ohio Valley that that war first broke out. The English began the war with great vigor, encroaching. France was to be pushed back at four points, the mouth of the St. Lawrence, the Ohio Valley, the Great Lakes, and at Lake Champlain. William Johnson, the Indian agent of the Mohawk, for the reason that he was the only man who could hope to engage the Iroquois Indians on the English side in the war, was chosen to lead an armj^ against Crown Point. " My w^ar kettle is on the fire," he said in a speech to the Indians, " my canoe is ready to launch, my gun is loaded, my sword is by my side and my axe is sharpened." He threw down the war belt and an Oneida chief took it up; but there had to be endless councils and much consumption of barbecued oxen and punch before some three hundred braves were aroused to the pitch of join- ing him afterwards at Lake St. Sacrement, as Lake George was then called. 15 In the summer of 1755, Johnson's soldiers gath- ered slowly at Albany from five different colonies, amid much confusion about provisions, each prov- ince attempting" to feed its own men. In July some of these men were sent up the Hudson to build forts at the various carrying- places on the river and to cut a road from Albany to Lake George. It was not until the latter part of Au- gust that General Johnson with some three or four thousand men made his way up the rough hewn road, regaling his officers by the way with cold venison and lemon punch. Johnson was an ambitious joung Irishman, of a good family, amassing a fortune out of trade and wild lands, a favorite with men in power and much loved by the Indians by reason of his just dealing and his half-breed family. He lived in some state on the Mohawk in a colonial mansion, swarmed over bj'^ his Indian neighbors, a strange mixture of the European gentleman, the Indian trader and the pioneer. Arrived at the lake, his first act was to re-name it after King George II, not only in honor of this dull monarch, but as he said to assert his undoubted dominion over these waters. He chose for his camj) a spot near the beach at the head of the lake, with a marsh to the west of him and the higher ground on which Fort George afterwards stood on the east. He threw up no en- trenchments for he expected soon to move on down the lake to the attack of Crown Point. He waited only on the stores, cannons and boats which were being slowly and laboriously hauled up from 16 Fort Edward, on old-fashioned J)utcli wagons, to be dumped on the beach ready for transportation. THE FRENCH AT TICONDEROGA. It happened when the grand English expe- dition ag-ainst Fort DuQuesne on the .Ohio had been defeated by the Indian ambuscade in July that the French had learned from reading* the captured papers of General Braddock that there w^ere men mustering* at Albany to attack Crown Point. Immediately^ the Baron Dieskau, an experi- enced German officer and a field marshal of France, having some regiments of finely trained regular soldiers at his command, was ordered to ascend Lake Champlain and oppose General John- son. It was expected in Canada that Dieskau would capture Fort Edward and perhaps even penetrate to Albany. He was a very active and courageous man whose motto was " Boldness wins! " and he set out fully determined to " mar the plans of the English." When he had reached Crown Point he did not wait there to be attacked but moved on and encamped at Ticonderoga, his forces being the first to occupy that important point which commanded both the carrying place to Lake George and the southern arm of Lake Champlain, the only two ways of approaching Canada from the interior with cannon. Baron Dieskau had a number of Indians with him, and arrived at Ticonderoga^ he urged them to go scouting that he might know where the English were and what were their numbers. But 17 the Indians ^^ould do nothing" but devour oxen, hog-s and brandy, until the impatient Frenchman declared that it needed " the i^atience of an angel to get on with these devils." At length a few of them saw fit to venture near Fort Edward, and returned with one scalp and a prisoner. Captives plaj-ed an important part in these wars around Lake George, for in such a wilderness thej' were the only means of g-aining information, and for this reason they were known to the Indians as " living letters." This prisoner was threatened in the usually effective way with Indian tortures if he failed to tell the truth, but he risked his own life by telling a falsehood, which he hoped would draw the French into a trap. The English army, he said, had retired to Albany and but five hun- dred men remained at Fort Edward, which was not in a state of defense. THE MARCH ON FORT EDWARD. Baron Dieskau thought this his opportunity to capture Fort Edward. It was impossible to take all of the army at Ticonderoga with him through the woods to this place and he chose fifteen hun- dred men for the expedition, something over two hundred French regulars and nearly fourteen In- dians and Canadians. Each man carried food for eight days upon his back and officers were allowed no other baggage than a spare shirt and pair of shoes, a blanket and a bearskin each. Indians were ordered to take no scalps until the enemy was routed, since ten men might be killed while < 18 one was being scalped. The men ascended in canoes that long* arm of Lake Chaniplain run- ning parallel with Lake George. At its head they left their canoes and began their march through the woods, the Indians guiding them over fallen trees and rocks, through underbrush and swamps, toward the Hudson, the whole army of fifteen hundred men sometimes crossing a stream one at a time on a log. Johnson lay at Lake George in the confusion of a new camp, w^hen his scouts brought him word that a body of French and Indians were marching through the woods from South Bay to Fort Ed- ward. Johnson knew that the works at Fort Ed- ward, or Fort Lyman, as it was then called, were 3^et unfinished, the cannon mostly unmounted and the men carelessly encamped in various places outside the entrenchments. There was great danger that the French would capture this post, in which case Johnson's army would be cut oft" from supplies and obliged to capitulate. He hur- ried a messenger off to Fort Edward with a note to the commander, in which he advised him to bury his unmounted cannon and make a brave defense. Dieskau's Indians meanwhile were not pleased with the idea of attacking Fort Edward. These people never liked open fighting and they dreaded cannon. Instead of guiding Dieskau directly to Fort Edward they led him to the banks of the Hudson, between the present towns of Sandy Hill and Glens Falls. Here the new road ran which had so recently been cut between Fort Edward 19 and Lake Georg-e. The Indians lay in wait along its edge and captured the messenger that John- son had sent to warn Fort Edward of its danger. They also killed and captured some wagon drivers and put others to flight. From these prisoners Dieskau for the first time learned that there were several thousand men at Lake George. Still he would have marched on against Fort Edward but his Indians objected. There were cannon, they said, at Fort Edward and none at Lake George. A part of them were converted Mohawks from near Montreal and they did not like to go where they were likely to kill their own kindred. They ob- jected that Fort Edward was on English land; they would not attack the English on their own ground, they said, but they were willing to fight them at Lake George, which was French soil. Fort Edward was French land also, said Dieskau, but the Indians denied this. Either the Baron must be content to beat an inglorious retreat or march against Johnson at Lake George. He chose to do the latter. He knew that Johnson's men were raw- recruits, American farmers in homespun, most of whom had never seen fighting of any sort, and like all officers from the Old World, he believed that such men were very poor soldiers, likely to run at the first onslaught, as was too often the case in- deed. " The more there are the more we shall kill," said he and he turned up the road to Lake George and marched that day as far as Glen Lake where he camped for the night on the evening of the seventh of September, 1755. 20 THE BLOODY MORNING SCOUT. An attack was the last thing expected at Lake George. The cannon lay on the beach, the camp was unfortified and the only anxietj' of the officers was for Fort Edward. The soldiers were farmers, niostl}' armed with their own hunting pieces, with hatchets stuck in their belts and powder horns slung over their shoulders, the officers were large- I3' inexperienced in war; their general, Johnson, was a curious mixture of the country gentleman and trader; General Lyman had been a Yale tutor and later a lawyer; Colonel Titcomb had seen some service in the last war, as had Williams, a member of the General Court of Massachusetts, and deputy sheriff; Seth Pomeroj- was a gun- smith, Kuggles was a graduate of' Harvard, a lawyer and an innkeeper; while Putnam and Stark, future generals of the Revolution, had seen no more severe conflicts than an Indian skirmish and a hand-to-hand encounter with a she wolf in a cave. The officers held a council of war to decide what was to be done to save Fort Edward, the fall of which would cut them off from home and supplies. They little suspected that the enemy was about breaking camp only four miles distant, at Glen Lake. The chief of the Mohawks, King Hendrick, a fat old fellow who had long been a w^arm friend of the English, at- tended the council. It was proposed to send five hundred white men and some Indians to the aid of Fort Edward and five hundred more to South "•-^ yc- -h ■■ , 'J. -I *z^^^»t>^ ^ A ^**^^— /^^37*^ j^^^^^^l/c^:^^ 4^^-i^^i<^ Cji^^^^^^ 1 ^H/l^^ 21 Bay, on Lake Champlaiii, to cut off the French from their boats. But King- Hendrick did not apA . prove. He put several sticks together and broke '^^^-^ them; he then put a jiumber of sticks tog-ether y^f^ and showed that they could not be broken. In [ -'/z this way he objected to the force being- divided. J The hint was taken and it was decided to send one thousand whites and two hundred Indians to the aid of Fort Edward. King- Hendrick still ob- jected that they were too few to fig-ht and too many to be killed, but since they were g"oing he climbed upon a g-un carriage and made a stirring- speech to the Indian warriors to g-et them to fol- low him to battle. It was eight o'clock on the morning- of the eig-hth of September, 1755, that the twelve hundred men set forth on their march to the relief of Fort Edward. The party was commanded by Colonel Ephraim Williams, a robust and heavy man who had done some Indian fig-hting- in the last war, and who, thoug-h he was himself an uneducated man, loved learning- so well that he had made a will at Albany leaving a legacy to found a school, which afterwards became Williams College. The Indians were led by King Hendrick, so old and fat that he ambled at their head on a pony. The men marched some distance down the road and then halted for a portion of their forces to come up. So certain were the English that the enemy was no nearer than Fort Edward that no scouts were sent out and a straggler going on ahead during the halt was captured by the French, advancing from their camp of the nig"ht, and g-ave Dieskau information of the approaching- body of men. The Frencli general was on tlie full march to Lake George along- the new road where it ran between the flanks of French and West Mountains. He in- stantly ordered his men to drop their knapsacks and lie flat on the ground, the Indians upon one side of the road, the Canadians upon the other and the French in the rear. He hoped that Wil- liams would march directly into this ambuscade and so be enclosed as in a bag and destroyed as Braddock's army had been on the Ohio. And in- deed the English and their Indians came on care- lessly enough. They had begun to enter the trap when the Mohawks of the St. Lawrence, seeing their brothers of the Mohawk Valley in advance, arose and fired into the air as a warning. The concealed Canadians and Frenchmen immediately opened fire. Many of the English party dropped under the deadly volley and their front ranks fell back, " doubled up like a pack of cards." There was great confusion. King Hendrick was killed, and Colonel Wiliams, running up a little eminence and climbing upon a boulder to encourage his men, was struck down where his monument now stands. Completely taken by surprise as they were, Williams' forces were soon routed and fell back toward the lake, pursued by the French and Indians. Some of the men were, how- ever, rallied by Lieutenant-Colonel Whiting, and with the aid of a party sent out from Johnson's camp at the lake and some Mohawk Indians cov- 23 ered the retreat, fig-hting- from behind trees in true Indian fashion and falling slowly back toward the lake. The fugitives reached the camp first, then those who carried the wounded and finally this plucky body of men after delivering their last volley, three-fourths of a mile from the lake, arrived in good order. This affair was long known as the " bloody morning scout." THE BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE. At the camp at Lake George no one suspected the neighborhood of the enemy until about nine o'clock in the morning, when firing was heard at the ambush about three miles south. Then at last these untried men realized their danger and went to work in all haste to build some sort of a rude defense. They dragged boats and wagons to their front and with them and the newly felled trunks and branches of trees built the hastiest sort of a barricade about their camp, hauling up cannon from the beach for it's defense. There were not more than seventeen hundred effective men of them and they were a good deal demoral- ized by the morning's rout, so that a brisk assault at this moment would probably have carried the improvised works, boats, wagons, cannon and all, Dieskau guessed that a surprise would be too much for these raw Xew^ York and Xew England levies and he had intended to chase the fugitives to their very camp and enter it with them pell- mell, but his Canadians and Indians were an un- manageable sort of troops, trying to the soul of a 24 French field marshal. They had scattered every- where through the woods in pursuit of the. retreat- ing" Engflish and were already plundering* and scalping- the dead. Dieskau called a halt not far from the lake and caused a trumpet to be blown to call in the scattered men. The Indians and Canadians came in but slowl^^ unwilling" to in- volve themselves in a fresh fig"ht; for Indians never tempt their luck by following- up a success, and the Canadians had been taught in the school of Indian warfare. The morning's victory was enough for them, but Dieskau insisted and they followed sullenly in the rear of the French regu- lar troops as the latter marched briskly up the road to Lake George. Presently the farmer soldiers behind their wagons and upturned boats at the Lake George camp saw the French coming up the road in" beau- tiful order, their white uniforms and polished arms glistening in the sun. As they approached from the front the Indians came around through the woods on the left of the encampment and charged down the hill where Fort George after- wards stood, yelling and whooping in their own blood curdling manner. It was too much for the untried men in Johnson's little army; some of them slunk back, but their officers drew their swords and threatened to run them through if they did not stand to their posts. At this moment an assault would have won the day; but Indians have no stomach for this sort of fighting. In- stead, they scattered about the camp, after their 25 manner, each man behind a tree and firing- on his own account. The French deployed, formed among the trees in the front and fired. But the English cannon, under the command of a good officer, Captain Eyre, greeted them with dis- charges of grape shot which made " streets, lanes and alleys " through the ranks of the French and compelled them to seek a place of greater shelter. On they came again, however, and there was a hot and steady fire on both sides, which seemed to the unaccustomed ears of a surgeon in the English camp like " nothing but thunder and lightning and perpetual pillars of smoke." Johnson soon retired to his tent with a flesh wound in the thigh and Lyman, lawyer though he was, staid in the thick of the fight for about four hours, encourag- ing the men. They were getting into the spirit of the thing by this time. As the wounded were carried to the rear, the wagoners in the camp seized their guns and powder horns and joined in the fight, while some of the men who ran out of ammunition " picked up the enemy's and gen- erously returned it to them." A body of Indians now opened fire from the commanding hill where Fort William Henry was afterwards built, but a few shell dropped among them scattered them. For two hours Dieskau at- tacked the front and left of the English cam]). lie then came around to the right and for two hours more the struggle was at this point, where were the regiments of Colonel Kuggles, of Titcomb and of the dead Williams. Titcomb was killed at 26 this point, fighting- from behind a tree in advance of the barricade, in true frontier lasliion. Once more the French returned to tiie front and tried to g-ain the rear, but some well directed shot from a thirty-two pounder " made them shift their berth." The French regulars, who had borne the brunt of the fight, were badly cut to pieces but the doughty Baron would not give up the day. At length he was shot in the leg. His adjutant, ^Montreuil, was washing tlie wound with brandy, after the practice of the day, when the unfortu- nate general was hit in the knee and in the thigh. The Baron was helped to a sitting posture behind a tree, and Montreuil fetched two Canadians to carry him off, but one of them was shot and fell dead across Dieskau, who in agony from his in- juries and wounded pride, cursed the Indian and Canadian troops for cowards and authors of the misfortunes of the day and ordered Montreuil to leave him and lead the French once more against the English, saying that here was as good a deathbed as any for him. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when ISIontreuil took command of the French forces. They were alreadj^ wavering and no sooner did the hardy .American frontiersmen in the English camp percei\e this than they scaled their bar- ricades and rushed upon them with clubbed mus- kets and hatchets. There was nothing left for Montreuil but to lead a retreat. 'J'he Frenchmen took to the woods and nuule their way around the south end of French mountain, dropping their 27 accoutrements as the3' fled. Their flig-ht prob- ably gave its name to the mountain thoug-h I have heard it ascribed by an old inhabitant to the fact that two Frenchmen once spent some months on the miountain where they were believed to have recovered some treasure buried by these fugitives, unlikely as it is that men laden with their own provisions would have lug-g-ed valuables about with them in a wilderness or climbed a mountain to conceal it on a precipitate flight. It is certain that the fug-itive French, having- left their knap- sacks behind them, suffered greatly for food be- fore they reached South Bay where they took to their canoes and paddled back to Ticonderoga. The battle of Lake George will be forever memorable as the first struggle in which the un- trained farmers of America faced the finely drilled troops of the Old World and learned the courage which afterwards led them to dare to bring on the struggle of the Revolution. THE BLOODY POND FIGHT. ^lany of the Indians and Canadians of Dies- kau's army were in no such haste as their French comrades. Before the battle at the lake was over they had deserted the fight and returned to the battlefield of the morning to scalp and plunder the dead. The commandant at Fort Edward, knowing nothing of the danger which had threatened him but hearing of the wagoners who had been killed on the road, sent out a party of sixty men to scour 28 the woods. This party returned with the report that firing- had been heard toward Lake George, wherenjjon some two hundred men under Captains Folsom and McGinnis were ordered to march to the assistance of General Johnson. Advancing- up the Lake George road, these men found the French knapsacks and baggage lying on the ground where they had been dropped before the ambush of the morning-. On a hill were a few Indians on the lookout, but the Fort Edward party contrived to get between them and the baggage. Further on they came upon the enemy seated on the margin of a little pool in the woods, resting and waiting no doubt to see what would be the fate of their deserted comrades at the lake before they made good their retreat with their booty. There were three hundred of the Canadians and Indians and but two hundred and ten of the Foi:t Edward men, but the latter were mostly cool frontiersmen and a deadlj' aim. They fell upon the others around the pool and a sharp fight ensued in which one of the leaders, Captain McGinnis, was mortally wounded but did not cease to give orders until the Cana- dians and Indians fled, when he fainted and was carried on horse to Lake George, there to die. The Fort Edward men reached the battlefield at this place in time to see the last of the French rout. Because of the stubborn struggle around the dark little pool in the woods, and because, as it is said, the dead were afterwards thrown into it as a sim- |)le method of l)urial it got the nnnio of F.loody I'ond, and krcj)s it lo this (hiy. 29 BARON DIESKAU'S DANGER. The wounded general, a field marshal of France and a German nobleman, was left alone on the forest battlefield at the close of the day's action. He had caused his laced hat and coat to be laid beside him, probablj^ with the idea that they would indicate his rank to those who found him. The first man to observe him skulked cautiously up and took shelter behind a tree, as was common in Indian and frontier warfare. The battle was scarcely over and it was a question whether the fellow would not murder him, so Dieskau put his hand to his pocket for his watch to offer it as a bribe. Instantly the man fired, supposing that the wounded of&cer was about to draw a pistol. The ball penetrated the hips and perforated the bladder of the unfortunate general. " You rascal, why did you fire? " the Baron de- manded. " You see a man lying in his blood on the ground and you shoot him." " How did I know," the fellow answered, in broken English, for he was a renegade French- man. " How did I know you did not have a pis- tol? I had rather kill the devil than have the devil kill me." "You are a Frenchman! " exclaimed Dieskau. " Yes," was the reply, " it is more than ten years since I left Canada." Several of those harpees who haunt a battle- field now fell upon the wounded general and be- gan to strip him of his clothes, but he soon per- 30 suaded them to carry him to their general, which they did, eight of them bearing him in a blanket to Johnson's tent, who when he learned that the French commander was his prisoner, called for surgeons and refused to have his own wound treated until those of the suffering Baron were attended to. A new danger now awaited Dieskau, which he did not suspect. Those troublesome allies, the In- dians, were drunk with revenge, as was usual with them after a battle. The morning's losses had fallen heavily on them and forty out of two hun- dred had been slain, including several important chiefs. They had had no appetite for the struggle of the afternoon but looked on while the battle raged, saying that they were come to see their English brothers fight. At the close of the day they invaded the battlefield and took seventy scalps; but they were still enraged though far from being so high spirited as their English brothers could have wished. Some of them now walked into General Johnson's camp as freely as they had been wont to haunt his mansion on the Mohawk. The suffering Dieskau, lying on Johnson's pallet, could not understand their talk but he observed by their voices that they were angry and saw that they cast sullen glances at him from time to time as they talked. When they were gone he asked Johnson what they wanted. " What do they want? " repeated Johnson. "To burn you, by God; eat you and smoke you 31 in tiieir pipes, in revenge for the three or four of their chiefs that ^vere l^illed. But do not fear, you shall be safe with me or they will kill us both." Dieskau wished to be removed lest he should in- commode his host, but Johnson said: " I dare not move you, for if I did so the Indians would mas- sacre you. They must have time to sleep." These worthies came into the tent again at eleven o'clock at night. Their voices were very menacing, but no one knew better how to manage them than did Johnson, and at last they seemed quieted, and came and shook hands with the wounded general before leaving. It was now midnight and Johnson caused Dieskau to be re- moved to a colonel's tent under guard of a cap- tain and fifty men. The men on guard were charged to let no Indian into the tent but when morning had come and one presented himself unarmed they let him pass. Xo sooner, however, was the rascal in than he dre^v a naked sword out from under his cloak and sprang at the wounded general. But the Colonel was too quick for him: he threw himself between the savage and his victim, disarmed the fellow and pushed him out of the tent. With this last adventure Dieskau's danger from the Indians was over, for nothing could induce them to remain longer at Lake George. They must go home, they said, to cheer their people after the death of so many warriors and Johnson was obliged to present them %vith two pieces of 32 black blanketing" with which to cover the graves of the dead, according- to Indian customs of con- dolence. When Baron Dieskau had sufficiently' recovered to bear the journey he was carried to New York on a litter. He was for some time a prisoner in Eng-land and afterwards returned to France where he died twelve j^ears to a day after the battle of Lake Georg-e, of the eifects of the wounds received on that field. The French in Canada were g-reatly g-rieved over the defeat of Dieskau and now that it had failed were ready to call his expedition " a piece of bravado." They were disg"usted that " so g-lorious a trophy " as a French field marshal should have been left on the field of battle and wished that he mig-ht have been brought off, " dead or alive." HOLDING LAKE GEORGE. The battle of Lake Georg-e caused the expe- dition against Crown Point to be abandoned, as perhaps it would soon have been in any case be- cause of the lateness of the season and the diffi- culty of bringing up the necessary stores from Albany. The murder of some teamsters near Fort Edward before the battle and the alarm of the French invasion caused those who had Avagons and horses to hide them and drivers to decline the perilous service. Most of the provisions for the expedition were still at Albany-; the greater part of the ammunition and boats, remained at Fort Edward, and a few jaded horses were all that Johnson could command. The battle had another result for the Eng-lish. They began to fortify themselves on Lake Georg-e. The spirited attack of Dieskau had taught them the necessity of this. Entrenchments were thrown up around the camp and a fort was beg"un on a rise of ground on the lake shore, in the east- ern part of the present grounds of the Fort Wil- liam Henry Hotel. Johnson named this post William Henry after a young English prince, th€ King's grandson, and rechristened the fort at the Great Carrying Place, Fort Edward, after another young prince, though it had been known for some months as Fort Lyman, in honor of the brave officer of that name. While Fort William Henry was building the French were entrenching themselves at Ticon- deroga, so that they now commanded one end of Lake George and the English the other. Here the rival powers were nearer each other than at any other point, onl^' something over thirty miles of placid water flowing between them. "Wlien Johnson had first heard of the intended French invasion he had asked for more men. These came in October. They were dressed in summer clothing, with no covering but one thin homemade blanket each, and they shivered in their camp as winter came on apace in this cold northern climate. They were a disorderly lot of newly-levied men who had been reared in the half-wild freedom and equality of a new laud, and 34 their officers, chosen by the men from among themselves, commanded no respect. When the cold November rains set in and muddy water stood in the tents they clubbed their muskets and marched off in squads. The camp finally broke up on the twenty-seventh of the month, and a few men from each of the northern colonies were left to hold the post, while the rest marched off down the road to Fort Edward, insulting- their colonel by the way. In the next summer, that of 1756, the English meant at least to capture Ticonderoga, by way of Lake George. Again a great many men got to- gether at Albany, and seven thousand of them slowly made their waj"^ up the Hudson toward Lake Georg-e, pestered on their waj' by gangs of Indians who discouraged straggling by scalping the stragglers. The new Fort Williami Henry was in command of Colonel Jonathan Bagley, a jocular fellow, who, when he was ordered to hurr}' on the boat building which was now in progress at Lake George, answered that " every wheel " should go " that rum and human flesh could move." But, in spite of honest Bagley's efforts, the campaign jiroved a failure, for there was a deal of confusion about provisions besides a change of commanders at midsummer, which was no improvement, and the English troops, like the King of France and his forty thousand men in the nursery rhyme, having marched up the Hud- son, marched down again at the end of the season, ]but not without leaving many dead behind them 35 at their unsanitary camping places. The French, left unmolested at Ticonderoga, amused them- selves with fishing and hunting the ducks, geese, partridges, beavers and clouds of wild pigeons which they found there. SCOUTING ON I^AKE GEORGE. Lake George was now the center of warfare. Ticonderoga swarmed with Indians from the northwest who made their way with ease over the immense system of waterways commanded by the French to this " nest of hornets." From here they fell upon the thinlj^ peopled back set- tlements of the English with fire and the hatchet. Wild Pottawatomies ascended Lake George to pick off the sentinels at Fort William Henry with their stone-headed arrows, and once an English captain and fifty men were caught in an ambush not far from the latter fort, and only six escaped to tell the tale. The English garrison at Fort William Henry had no Indians to send on like errands against Ticonderoga; no one to annoy the enemy and render him more wary; no one to capture an occasional prisoner from whom they might learn what the French were doing and what were their numbers. The English were never so successful as the French in managing their Indian neigh- bors. They might count themselves lucky that they had Sir William Johnson to keep the Iroquois from going bodily over to the French. These In- dians declined to scout about posts and gradually 36 there grew up among- the English colonists a body of hardy and adventurous rangers, whose headquarters were at Lake George. Among these men were Stark and Putnam, afterwards gen- erals in the war of the Revolution. Sturdy frontiersmen they were, adventurous hunters and Indian fighters. The most famous of them all, and their leader, was Robert Rogers, a man who had smuggled goods through the waters of Lake George before the war. In this doubtful trade he had learned to speak French, and, what was of more importance, knew the forests and mountains of these inland water courses by heart. His char- acter was not an admirable one. Later in life he was suspected of dishonesty and treason, but he was a man of a good deal of natural ability, and never was there a better scout. Rogers and the hardy rangers of whom he was captain skated in the winter time down Lake George or clambered over drifts in their snow- shoes and approached Ticonderoga to take dar- ing observations of the works or intercept some small party of the garrison. During the open season they descended Lake George in boats, and if at its lower end they discerned signs of the enemy they laid by and feigned to be fishermen until night gave them a chance of escape. Quick- ness and stealth they practised, like their Indian forerunners on these waters, and above all things they dreaded a light snowfall in which they might be tracked, for their service was an exceedingly perilous one. Rogers, however, made light of its 37 perils and called a stealthy journey to Ticon- deroga, making- a visit to his " old friends, the French guard," who knew him indeed only too well. Once he and several others boldly marched up to a sentinel whose challenge Rogers answered in French. " Qui etes vous? " demanded the puzzled fellow. " Rogers I " replied the famous scout, and he hurried him off a prisoner to where his boats lay- hidden at the foot of the lake for the return trip to Fort William Henry. In June of 1756, Rogers was ordered by the English general, then making ready for a blow at Ticonderoga which never was struck, to go to Lake Champlain and intercept provisions and par- ties of the enemy. Rogers selected for his pur- pose fifty men and five whale boats. The party embarked on the beach at the head of Lake George and descended the lake until nightfall when they all encamped on an island. The next day they made for a point on the east shore, carried their boats over the mountains and launched them in South Bay; they descended this southern arm of Lake Champlain at night and when morning came they hid their boats within six miles of Ticonderoga. All day they lay in hiding and at night they slipped by the hostile fort. They could hear the sentinels at Ticonderoga calling to one another and they counted the camp fires to judge of the numbers of the French force at this post. They hid their boats for the day five miles below Ticonderoga and the next night at- 38 tempted to pass Crown Point, but the sky was so clear that they feared being discovered and re- turned to their hiding* place for another day. As they laj' hidden in the woods on the margin of the lake they saw one hundred boats pass up and down between the two French forts and once seven boat loads of French soldiers were about to land at their verj' hiding- place, but finally chose a spot farther on, where they might be seen eating their dinner all unconscious of the lurking enemy. The next night found the rangers in their boats once more and this time they slipped safely by be- tween Crown and Chimney Points under cover of the darkness and landed ten miles below. The fol- lowing day as they lay concealed thej' saw thirty boats and a schooner pass down the lake on the way to Canada. Thej' descended the lake fifteen miles farther before they dared attempt anything and then they lightened their boats and prepared for the attack of a schooner lying a mile below them; but two lighters meantime came in sight and made for Rogers' hiding place. The rangers fired upon them and offered quarter but the crews pushed for the opposite shore and Rogers gave them chase. He captured the two vessels and sank them, with their cargoes of flour, wine and brandy, though not until he had prudently hidden a few of the brandy casks in the woods, for future use. There were twelve men on the two boats, three of whom were killed and one wounded. With heartlessness worthy of an Indian, Rogers 4 3y dispatched the wounded man, since he was unable to walk and if left behind would g-ive the alarm and cause a pursuit of the rangers. The prisoners said they belonged to a detachment of five hun- dred men who were not far behind. When Rogers heard this he made haste to hide his boats and struck through the woods for Fort William Henry which he reached with eight prisoners and four scalps, for these men imitated the Indians even to the taking- of these hateful trophies. " It is an abominable kind of war," said a French officer who had witnessed Indian cruelties at Ticon- deroga. " The air one breathes is contagious of insensibility and hardness." Rogers afterwards retraced his way through the woods to his boats, and no doubt to his brandy, descended Lake Champlain almost as far as its foot, took three prisoners, hid his boats once more and returned to Fort William Henry a second time without having* been discovered. A month later the French were astonished to find some English boats in a cove eight miles north of Crown Point. They could not understand how they got there and sent out exploring parties to see if there were not some unknown water passage around Crown Point and Ticonderoga. A ^VINTER ATTACK ON FORT TTILLIAM HENRY. The battle of Lake George had taught both the French and the English caution, and the mid- winter of 1757 found them watching one another from either end of Lake George, which was frozen 40 as smooth as a floor. Montcalm, the new French general did not propose to imitate the rash ex- ample of Dieskau, but the Governor of Canada, Avho had had far less experience, was more enter- prising, and planned a winter attack upon Fort William Henrj', of which he hoped to gain the honors by placing his brother in command. In February a body of French and Canadian soldiers and some Abenaki Indians marched up Lake Champlain on the ice, dressed in overcoats, moc- casins and mittens and dragging sleds laden with bearskins and blankets for bedding; kettles for cooking; old sails by waj' of tents; provisions, and a change of moccasins and mittens. These men rested for a week at Ticonderoga, where they made three hundred scaling ladders. It was the fifteenth day of March, 1757, and still winter in this northern latitude, when they marched out from Ticonderoga and began to ascend Lake George. On the evening of the eighteenth they halted under the edg'e of a mountain, three miles from the head of the lake. There were about three hundred and fort}- ef- fective men in Fort William Henry, commanded by Major Eyre, a good engineer, one of the few officers who had escaped Braddock's defeat, and the man who had served the artillery so well at the Battle of Lake George. The works were not strong; outside the fort were a hospital, a saw- mill, a number of boats which had been built the year before for the attack on Ticonderoga, piles of wood and lumber, some sloops which were frozen 41 into the ice and one which was still on the stocks. The regular soldiers in the fort were Irishmen and were hardly recovered from a spree with which they had celebrated St. Patrick's Day. Their American comrades, the rangers, would gladly have joined in the jubilation but Captain Stark, who was then commanding them, pru- dently spent the holiday in his tent, with a lame hand which troubled him so much that he was unable to write orders for extra rations of rum at the request of his men. These unwillingly sober fellows were on guard on the night of the eighteenth, and it was they who detected a sound of distant chopping, down the lake, as the French replenished their camp fires at one o'clock in the morning. Two hours later the sentinels, on the alert now, heard the sound of many footsteps on the icy floor of the lake's surface. The French had depended on a surprise, for Canadian and Indian troops could not be counted on for an assault in any other case; but they knew that they were discovered when they heard the '* \Yhos " of the w^atchful garrison. Shortly after- wards the fort cannon were discharged into the darkness in the direction of the telltale footfalls, and no more was heard at the fort of the be- sieging force that night. The next day the French surrounded the fort, at a safe distance, and sent a body of Indians to oc- cup3' the road which led to Fort Edward. They kept up a harmless, distant fire that day and under cover of the night again approached by the ice. 42 Again tiaey were greeted with a discharg'e of grape and round shot and once more they retired, contenting themselves with setting fire to the sloops which lay frozen in the lake and the small boats along the shore which had been built at the expense of so much " rum and human flesh," the summer before. Some of the English soldiers sallied forth and attempted to save them, but it was too late. The next day the French lay quietly in the woods until noon, when they all marched across the lake at a safe distance, holding up their scaling ladders to view, like an army in a play. Several men were sent toward the fort, waving a red flag. Major Eyre dispatched a party to meet the flag, which presently returned with a blind- folded French officer, who bore a summons to surrender. The summons was accompanied by the usual threat of an Indian massacre in case of re- sistance, but Major Eyre paid no heed to this, merely rep)lying that he intended to defend Fort William Henry to the last. The Frenchman re- turned with the message, and the armj' on the ice approached as if to carry out their threat of an assault, but only fired a harmless volley against the wall of the fort and retired. At night the French were once more heard upon the ice and the garrison prepared for the promised assault; but the enemy was contented with falling upon the huts, storehouses, hospital, sawmill, lumber and wood which lay without the fort, building fires of pitch pine against them and burning all to the ground, not without hopes that the flames 4iJ would spread to the wooden walls of the fort itself. The falling- cinders did indeed threaten the soldiers' barracks, and the men were forced to tear the roofs off these buildings to save them. The next day a moist snow fell and the French staid in their camp, but on the day following- some volunteers ventured so near the fort as to fire the sloop on the stocks. Five of these men were killed — the sole loss of the whole expedition. The remainder of the French kept at a safe distance on the ice while the sloop went up in flames and ended the exploits of the winter siege, for the fol- lowing morning found French, Canadians and In- dians on their way down the lake, laboring through the three feet of snow which now cov- ered the ice, many of them snow blind and led on to Ticonderoga by the hand. The Governor of Canada, a vain-glorious mortal, made the most of this attempt and boasted that by its means the plans of the English had been '" calcined." MONTCALM OX LAKE GEORGE. The plans of the English had in fact taken quite another direction. A grand attack upon the fortress of Louisburg was proposed by the feeble English commander. Lord Loudoun, and most of the forces were the next summer drawn away from Fort William Henry and Fort Edward for this purpose. The French general, Montcalm, had bided his time and he now saw his chance to dislodge the English from Lake George. Agents of the French had been at work among the north- 44 western Indians all winter, persuading- them to join a great war party ag'ainst the English, and the Juh' of 1757 found a thousand of these savages gathered in Canada, in addition to a number of mission Indians from Maine and from Montreal, to whom Montcalm sung the war song, in the person of one of his aides, who chanted again and again the words, " Let us trample the English under our feet." During July numbers of sloops, ba- teaux and canoes were busily plying up and down Lake Champlain, moving Montcalm's forces to Ticonderoga. At the last of the month eight thousand men, two thousand of whom were In- dians, were assembled here. The French and Canadians laboriously dragged boats, cannon and stores across the portage, while their Indian allies gobbled a week's rations in three days and fell upon some cattle designed for the .French armj' . It was " a St. Bartholomew of the oxen," as one French officer said. The western Indians busied themselves in " making medicine " to insure suc- cess, and all joined in frequent war dances, where the warriors, painted with vermilion, white, green, yellow and a black made of the scrapings of kettles and api3lied with the aid of bear's grease, their scalp locks adorned with feathers, their ears split and weighted until they reached their shoulders, and knives suspended around their necks, danced through the assembly, hold- ing up some animal's head, to represent the head of the enemy, and boasting of their own prowess. A party of one hundred and thirty of the Indians 45 under Marin, a French leader, penetrated the woods as far as Fort Edward and returned with thirty scalps, which, however, it was afterwards found, represented only eleven men, the Indians having- learned the art of subdividing- these' trophies, since they brought a good i)rice in Canada. At another time three hundred Eng-lish soldiers, most of whom were from New Jersey and little used to Indian warfare, descended Lake George and were ambushed by the Indians at Sabbathday Point, where the savag-es fired on them at short range and then darted out and pur- sued them in their swift canoes. The frig-htened Jerseymen were overtaken. Many of them leaped into the water where they were speared like fish, and others were overtaken in the woods bj' their fleet-footed pursuers. Two hundred out of the three hundred were killed or captured, and the bodies of the dead floated for some time on the waters of the lake or lay along the shores. The Indians were afterwards discovered by a horri- fied priest making a meal of one of these poor fellows. The other prisoners met a happier fate, for w^hen they were taken by the French to be sent to Canada their Indian masters stipulated that they should be shod And fed on white bread, having an eye, no doubt, to the ransom which they could extract for them from the Canadian government. It is impossible for the French to put down the barbarous practices of the Indians without wound- ing the sensibilities of these touchy sous of the 46 forest and losing" their aid. Their red allies were indeed a sore trouble to the French, and Mont- calm found, as Dieskau had before him, that it required the patience of an ang"el to bear with them. They insisted on being consulted by the French general as to all his movements^ and often he had to be guided by their whims, for the French deemed Indians as important in forest warfare as cavalry on the plains. These people were now very much puffed up with their success at Sabbathday Point and their arrogance became unbearable. They said the lake was " red with the blood of Corlear," for so they called the Eng-- lish, and they were determined immediately to return home with their strings of scalps, saying that it would be tempting the master of life to venture on another fight. Montcalm was obliged to hold a council with them and bind them to him with an enormous wampum belt of six thousand beads. On the eve of departure he would let them have no brandy, and they grew uneasy and paddled up Lake George to the neighborhood of Sabbathday Point, where they amused themselves with killing rattlesnakes. There were not boats enough to carry all of the army of eight thousand as well as the cannon, stores and provisions, and on the thirtieth of July twenty-five hundred men, guided by the Canadian Mohawks and under the command of the Chevalier de Levis, started up the west shore of the lake on foot. They followed an old Indian trail up over Rogers' Kock, or Bald Mountain, as it was then 47 called, and throug-h the almost impenetrable forests and well-nigh impassable mountains of the Narrows to the mouth of Ganouske, or Northwest, Bay, where they halted to wait for the main army. The weather was so hot and the march so rough that two officers broke down by the way. At two o'clock in the afternoon of the first day of August, the main army embarked and began to ascend the lake. As the fleet rounded Anthony's Nose it was struck by one of those summer squalls common to this mountain lake, and the boats were forced to lie by under the shelter of the point until it was over. Deluged with rain, the French then pushed on, and as they neared Sabbathday Point the deserted boats and the mutilated bodies of the English who had been routed here by the Indians, could be seen cast up upon the shores. At Isle a la Barque, or Harbor Island, the Indians were resting from their snake hunt and awaiting them. These savages, one thousand in number, in one hundred and fifty birch canoes, took the lead; then came hundreds of bateaux, or large, flat- bottomed boats loaded with soldiery, all in line, as though marching on land; next the siege cannon and mortars, each on a platform resting upon two bateaux and rowed by militia, followed by provision boats, the field hospital and last of all a guard of French soldiers. Never was there a finer pageant than this army, gay with banners, brilliant costumes and savage bravery, as it floated slowly through the Narrows on the night of the first and second of August, 1757. This fleet of 48 boats rounded Tongue Mountain in the early morning- and made for the Bolton shore, guided by a triangle of fire built on the mountain side by the Chevalier de Levis as a signal. They came to land on or near the site of the present villag-e of Bolton, the men cooked their food and rested and a council was held. At ten o'clock Levis set forth ag-ain on the march along- the shore, and Montcalm's army broke camp at noon and em- barking advanced to Great Sandy Bay, as Basin Bay w^as then called, where it halted once more, until six o'clock, when all advanced to the small bay opposite Diamond Island, where a point liid them from Fort William Henry. THE SIEGE OF EORT WILLIAM HENRY. It was impossible that an army should have gathered at Ticonderoga and the garrison at Fort William Henry remain ignorant of the fact. Gen- eral Webb, who was in command of all the forces on the New York frontier, hearing of Fort Wil- liam Henry's danger, came up from Fort Ed- ward, a few days before the arrival of the French, and the enemy heard at Ticonderoga the dis- charges of cannon with which the garrison greeted him on his arrival. After inspecting the works he returned to Fort Edward where he wrote to ask for the militia and sent a thousand men from his garrison to aid in the defense of Lake George. He was left with sixteen hundred men at Fort Edward and eight hundred more at the various carrying places on the Hudson and at 49 Albany. He was not a man of great activity or courag-e and easily persuaded himself that it was his duty to remain at Fort Edward and protect the lower country. Col. Monro, the brave Scotchman who com- manded at Lake George, had now twenty-two hundred men with which to defend this post. Most of these men were encamped back of the present Fort William Henry Hotel, on the rise of ground where the Catholic Church now stands. There was a well entrenched camp on the hill where Fort George was afterwards built to which the men would retire for greater security in case of a siege and from this point relieve each other in guarding the fort. The fort itself stood on the east side of and in the grounds of the present hotel of the same name and directly overlooks the marsh and the beach where the modern rail- road station now stands. Its earthern embank- ments, which may be tracked to this day, formed an irregular square with bastions and were sur- mounted with parallel walls built of pine logs and filled in with earth. Connected with the fort was a farm which occupied the present grounds of the Fort William Henry Hotel and extended for some distance across and beyond the Plank Eoad of our day. For half a mile around, to the very foot of the mountains, indeed, the noble first growth pines had been cut down, that they might not shelter a lurking foe, and lay pell-mell, as they had fallen, a well-nigh impenetral)le mass. The Fort Edward road ended at the lake shore, 50 about at the middle of the beach, and still exists in a neig-hborhood road which runs between the Fort George hill and the site of the Battle of Lake George. The fort was defended on the north by the lake, on the east by the marsh ^yhich the present railroad partly occupies, and on the south and west by " chevaux-de-frise." On its ram- parts were seventeen cannon, some swivels and mortars; within its wall was the smallpox, a silent enemy which prej^ed upon armies in those days. At ten o'clock on the night of the second of August two boats put off from the fort on a scout- ing expedition. The men had rowed down the lake to the neighborhood of Diamond Island when their attention was attracted by a strange object against the west shore. It was in fact an awning over a boat in which were the French priests, and about and behind it were the whole French army. To approach too near was certain death, but the scouts pushed onward, curious to know w^hat it might be. They were coming every mo- ment nearer and a thousand Indians were lying in wait for 'them, when there arose a plaintive bleating from a sheep confined on a French pro- vision boat. The scouting party suddenly turned at the warning sound and made for the east shore. Instantlj^ the death yell rang through the air, from something like a thousand savage throats, and innumerable canoes sped out from shore. For many minutes there was a breathless chase. The Indians sped on until they saw that 51 the English were likely to make the other shore and escape when at last they fired upon them. The pursued men returned the fire as they pulled on for their lives. The Indians killed several of them in the end and captured three. The re- mainder escaped to the woods of the east shore. The prisoners gave Montcalm valuable informa- tion of the position and plans of the garrison; the fugitives made their way through the woods to the fort and warned the English of the approach of the enemy. That night there was mourning among the In- dians. A Nippising chief had been killed in the fray. His tribesmen dressed him in the most magnificent of savage costumes, loaded him with necklaces of porcelain beads, adorned him with nose and ear pendants, put silver bracelets on his arms, hung a gorget by a scarlet ribbon at his throat, concealed the pallid hue of death on his face with the most brilliant paints, placed a pipe in his mouth, a tomahawk at his belt, a lance in his hand, rested his gun in the hollow of his stiffened arm and deposited a kettle filled with food at his side. The dead chief, thus attired, was seated upon a little grassy eminence while his friends surrounded him listening to the funeral oration, dancing a solemn dance, to the tinkling of small bells, and finally burying him as he sat, well equipped, as they thought, for the journey to another world. At two o'clock the firing of a cannon at Fort William Henry broke on the stillness o^ *he night 52 air and announced that the g-arrison was warned of the presence of the enemy. Indian scouts brought word that the English were in- motion, Montcalm, on the chance that they might be com- ing to attack him, formed his army for battle. At daybreak the French marched in three columns up the west shore, while the Indians approached the fort by water, their canoes making a line from shore to shore. The artillery as it rounded an in- tervening point fired a salute to the doomed fort. The English tents might still be seen standing on the high ground behind the fort, but the garri- son was busy striking them and burning their huts, that these might afford the enemy no shelter, gathering in their horses and cattle from the woods and skirmishing with the Indians, who began to hover around them. Montcalm thought of making an assault on the entrenched camp at Fort George hill, and he marched his army around to the eastward of this spot. The Eng- lish, with the exception of those on duty in the fort, were now collected at this point, and the men could be heard busily strengthening the works, which were defended by six cannon in ad- dition to those in the fort. Montcalm stood not far from the spot where Dieskau had been de- feated, and his final decision was not to risk the men so sorely needed for the defense of Canada in an assault. He chose instead the site of the present village of Caldwell for a regular sieg'e. He gradually withdrew his main army to the farther side of the little ravine north of Caldwel] 5 53 now known as Brink's Hollow and encamped on land afterwards included in the grounds of the mansion house of James Caldwell, leaving- a body of Indians and Canadians encamped on the Fort Edward road to cut off all communication with that post. On the first day of the siege Montcalm sum- moned the garrison to surrender, with the usual threat of the French that the Indians might be- come unmanageable in case they were irritated by a stubborn resistance. While the flags of truce were flying these braves scattered over the fort fields, and when Monro made answer that he should defend the post to the last and discharged all his cannon to make his reply the more em- phatic, a chief shouted back to the fort, in broken French: " You won't surrender, eh! Fire awajs then, and fight your best, for if I catch you I shall give you no quarter I " The next day, which was the fourth of August, the last of the French troops were withdrawn to the camp north of the little hollow, and Levis' men, besides scouting on the Fort Edward road, were ordered to appear here and there about the fort in a very active manner, that the English might think themselves surrounded. In reality it was impossible to completely surround Fort Wil- liam Henry without a much larger army, though the garrison was indeed invested with inaccessible woods and abandoned to its fate by those who might have succored it. The French, however, kn^w nothing of this. They believed that Webb 54 had six thousand men at Fort Edward. When night came on the cannon were landed at the spot still known as Artillery Cove, and trenches were opened for the siege. Eight hundred men worked hard all night, sawing and chopping up the great trees left lying on the ground and dig- ging out the stumps and roots before they could work in the soil itself. Cannon ball and shells from the fort guns flew above and around them and occasionally a man was wounded. Pieces of these shells and the remains of the siege works are still found in the gardens of Caldwell. So well did the men work that morning found them delving under cover from the guns of the fort, except at the battery on the extreme right, where the ground was very difficult. Some soldiers were killed in the camp on the mansion house grounds and Montcalm moved two regiments from the lake shore on this account. At four o'clock on this third day of the siege messengers came to ^lontcalm with word that two thousand men were marching up the Fort Edward road to the relief of Fort William Henry. The French general immediately sent a portion of his army to the aid of Levis, but the two thousand men proved to be one poor messenger, who was killed by the Indians. His vest, containing a letter concealed in a hollow musket ball, was* brought to Montcalm. The letter was from the English general, Webb, to Colonel Monro, and Montcalm read in it, what must have been news to him, that the French army was thirteen thou- 55 sand strong-, besides the fact that Webb could do nothing- for Monro until the militia arrived. It advised him to make the best terms he could. This letter, while it encourag-ed the French, caused Montcalm to hurry on the work in the trenches that he mig-ht capture the fort before the colonial militia should march to its relief. Many of the Indians were idling about their canoes or amusing- themselves with firing into the fields of the fort and killing the horses and cattle belonging to the garrison, a kind of warfare great- ly to their taste, while they did not hesitate to express their discontent that the " big guns " of the French were still silent. To remedy these matters, Montcalm called them to a council and reproved them for not aiding in the guarding of the Fort Edward road as he wished them to do. They replied that they had also something on their hearts, which was that their French father had had the assurance to go on with the siege without consulting them. Montcalm explained that he had been too hurried to do so, and cleared their sight, cleansed their hearts and restored their senses in the approved Indian manner with two belts and ten strings of wampum. This cere- mony performed, the Indians promised to do as Montcalm wished, and he told them what was written in General Webb's letter and informed them that the '' big guns " would begin their work the next day. On the morning of the sixth of August the first French battery of eight cannon and one mortar 56 was unmasked. Amid the yells and whoops of the Indians several rounds were fired and then the guns placed every two minutes upon the lake and g'arden sides of the fort, the English answering w^ith a brisk fire and the savages making the mountains resound with their cries of "joy when- ever it chanced that the French guns did some evident execution. The next day at six o'clock in the morning the second battery was opened on the right. The two batteries joined in firing* a salute on the arrival of Montcalm in the trenches. Both bat- teries then played an hour upon the fort and after a double salute from all the guns, accom- panied by a deal of Indian whooping Montcalm dispatched one of his aides to the fort with the letter of General Webb which he had captured two days before. He was urged to- this by the Indians, who thought that its discouraging tone would induce the garrison to surrender. Monro, however, merely thanked ]\[ontcalm for his polite- ness and said that he meant to make a gallant de- fense. The cannon opened fire once more on both sides and the Indians made the mountains ring whenever a shell fell within the fort. These fellows were far from sticking to their hum- drum task of guarding the Fort Edward road. They were everywhere, and they admired so much the French manner of digging covered passage- ways that they imitated them, digging small pits outside the lines, from which they picked off the gunners at the fort. 57 At three o'clock in the afternoon of this same day, which was the seventh of Aug-ust and the fourth of the siege, five hundred of the English made a sortie and tried to establish a post on the Fort Edward road, but they were driven back with a loss of fifty men. All the time the work went on in the trenches, which were rapidly approaching- the fort. Two cowards deserted from the garrison, but when they approached the French lines through the fort garden, now the grounds of the Fort William Henry Hotel, some Indians who lay on their stomachs in advance of the French approaches fired upon them and instantly all the mountains about the lake echoed with the yells of the savages. The French thought that the English had intended to make a sortie and were dis- couraged by these fearful whoops, but it is more 'ikely that they disheartened deserters. The French siege works had now reached the edge of a small swamp which divided them from the gardens of the fort, filled in that day with cat-tails and swamp grasses, but now known as Welch's Hollow, much of which has been filled up in imjjroving the hotel grounds and building the Plank Eoad. Although it was morning and the men unprotected from the fire of the fort such was the hast« of Montcalm that he ordered a bridge to be built across the hollow capable of bearing cannon. This was done by laying hurdles of hollow squares made of logs and fas- cines, or bundles of sticks, on the marsh, and 58 building a sort of corduroj- road on them. By afternoon the French had made a lodgment in the very gardens of the fort and the Indians crept ahead of them among the beans and corn and picked off men on the ramparts. One brave even killed and scalped a woman who had sallied forth in search of vegetables. It was on this same day, the eighth, that a panic-stricken Indian saw the glitter of arms upon one of the mountains and hurried to camp with the news. Instantly the whole French camp was in motion, a portion to repel the relief coming by way of the mountains and the remainder to protect the French in- trenchments. The English, in their fortified camp on Fort George hill, were seen to be in motion, and the cannon were ordered to fire high that the balls might reach this spot and prevent them marching out to the aid of the relieving party. In fact there was no relief coming and the English were only making ready to receive the French, for when they saw them on the march they supposed that it was to attack them. THE FAIiL OF FORT WILLIAM HENRY. The next night the English fired long and briskly on the French as they labored hard in the fort garden to throw up works. The chance of dislodging them was the last hope of the gar- rison, and this failed, for by the morning of the ninth of August and the sixth day of the siege thirty-two French cannon were ready to open at short range on the walls of the fort, which 59 were already pretty well battered down. Its large guns, which were of poor metal, were all burst or disabled, and but seven small cannon remained with which to answer the combined batteries of the besieging arm}'. The French might now easily surround the doomed post, separate it from the entrenched camp on Fort George hill and when a breach had been made in its wall take it by assault, when all the horrors of an Indian massacre would be certain to follow. On the morning of August ninth the English officers held a council, at which it was agreed that the onh' course left was to surrender while good terms might yet be demanded. At seven o'clock a white flag was hoisted, a drum beat and an English officer with a wounded foot issued from the gate of the fort and rode to the French lines on horse- back. The garrison demanded to be allowed to march out with the honors of war and retire to Fort Edward. It was not difficult to make terms with Montcalm, for Canada had done so much fighting and so little farming during the war that her people were well-nigh starved and wanted no more mouths to feed. It was agreed that the garrison should march out of the fort with arms and baggage, should be escorted to Fort Edward by a body of French troops, should not serve in the war again for eighteen months and that all French prisoners of war should be returned to Canada in their stead. Before con- cluding the terms Montcalm took care to call a council of the Indians, consult them and exact 60 a promise from them that they would prevent their young" men from doing the English any harm. THE MASSACRE OF I.AKE GEORGE. The garrison of Fort William Henry now hur- riedly packed their baggage, Montcalm sent men to guard the ammunition and provisions, which Were very precious to the French at this time, and caused all the barrels of rum and wine to be staved in; it being thought best to leave the re- maining plunder to the Indians. Some sick men still lay in the infected casemates of the fort, neglected by friends and shunned by foes because they were ill of the smallpox. At twelve o'clock the garrison of Fort William Henry marched out. While the ceremonies of capitulation were going on without the fort Indians climbed in through the casemates and their first act was to murder the sic% whom they found there. Father Kou- beaud, a French missionary among the Indians, was horrified to see one brave come forth from the fort bearing the bleeding head of one of his vic- tims and parading it as the most valuable of prizes. The garrison, fearing the Indians, begged a French guard, which was granted, and under its protection marched " in beautiful order " over to the entrenched camp on Fort George hill. The Indians hung around, sullen and discontented. To return without scalps, captives and plunder was to them a dismal prospect. Young braves felt that they were robbed of the honors and 61 rewards due them, for they expected no other pay for their services. They dug- up the dead and scalped them, and when later at their homes in the northwest they fell a prey to the small- pox concluded that the reveng-eful English had cast some spell upon them. When they had robbed the fort of its poor pickings of plunder and scalps they pushed insolently into the en- trenched camp, where the French stood guard over the fallen garrison, wandered about feeling the long hair of the cowering women, and terrify- ing the children among the prisoners. Presently they began to plunder the camp chests of the English officers, who vigorously resisted them. Things had an ugly look. The French guard was alarmed, A messenger was sent to the French camp for ^Montcalm, He prayed, threatened and caressed; he called on the Canadian officers and interpreters to aid him in preventing a massacre, " Detestable position! " his aide cried, " of which no one who has not seen it can have any idea and which makes victory itself a sorrow to the victors," At last, by nine o'clock at night the French general had restored order, had induced the In- dians to promise to send some of their chiefs to Fort Edward with the English as a guard and had ordered the Canadian officers among the In- dians to prevent further mischief. The English spent an uneasy night. Neither they nor the Indians slept. The latter hovered around their prey, begging rum of the English, 62 who, willing to appease them, freely gave it from their canteens. Seventeen wounded men lay in huts in the camp. The day before the English surgeon had turned them over to the French sur- geon, who had placed a guard over them. For some reason this guard was removed, or deserted its post, and at five o'clock in the morning the Indians dragged these poor wretches from their pallets and murdered them. This added to the terror of the garrison. Men, women and children gathered together in haste to be gone. The In- dians crowded around them and began to snatch their baggage from them. Monro complained to the Canadian officers. They advised him to give up the baggage to the savages. But nothing ap- peased the Indians. Their greedy eyes were upon everything portable. They demanded food, cloth- ing — all they sa^v — " in a tone which announced that the thrust of a spear would be the price of a refusal." The frightened men complied with all their requests, stripping themselves of their very clothing if they might but purchase their lives. The French guard of four hundred men now arrived on the scene and hastily arranged them- selves in order, while the garrison fell into rank and marched out of the entrenchments. As they filed out the Indians saw with greedy eyes their prey escaping. The Abenakis from ]SIaine, Indians who had been converts for many years, but who were none the less inhuman at heart, had a grudge against the English colonists which called for 63 reveng-e. It was their sharp hatchets which first fell upon those who from illness or any other cause straggled from the ranks, and other Indians soon followed their example. A number of life- less bodies were speedily strewn about the ground, and heavy blows fell right and left on all within reach, and especially on the New Hampshire regi- ment which brought up the rear. A halt was ordered, but when those in front learned the cause they pushed on again in confusion. The butchery was soon over. Either the non-resistance of the helpless garrison, which had arms but no ammuni- tion, or the greed of the Indians, who could get a better price for a prisoner than a scalp, changed the massacre into a scramble for captives. '* The son was snatched from a father's arms, the daughter torn fromi the bosom of her mother, the husband separated /"rom his wife, the officers stripped to their shirts " ; and " a crowd of un- happy beings were running about at random, some toward the woods, others toward the tents of the French," and many toward the fort. The Canadian officers were either heartless or help- less in this emergency and told those who ran to them for protection to fly to the woods. The French guard seemed lost among so many blood- thirsty savages mingled as they were with their helpless victims. Levis ran in all directions try- ing to quell the tumult. A French sergeant was killed by the blow of a spear in trying to defend the English, and another officer was gravely wounded. The main French army was at too 64 great a distance to be of any avail, and Montcalm only arrived on the scene after the butchery was over and while the Indians were still rushing- madly here and there in pursuit of captives. To use the words of an eye witness, he " multiplied himself, he was everj'where; praj'ers, hienaces, promises, were used; he tried everything" and at last resorted to force." He wrested the nephew of an English .colonel from the hands of a war- rior, and immediately a number of other Indians, preferring a scalp to nothing, murdered their prisoners. The tumult increased until some one thought of calling to the garrison, which still made a compact bodj% to increase their speed. They needed no second hint. Never was a double- quick march made in better time. The Indians were by this time laden w'ith spoils and could not easily pursue. Some retired and ' the others w^ere dispersed by the Frenchmen. About fifty were killed in this massacre and six or seven hundred taken captive. The van reached Fort Edward in some order, but manj^ others, fleeing through the woods, half naked and nearly fam- ished, only found their destination by aid of the fort guns w'hich were kept booming to guide them in. Numbers had fled to the French camp and to Fort William Henry for protection, where Monro had gone at the first of the trouble to make com- plaints. Father Eoubeaud, who had witnessed the mas- sacre, repaired to the fort immediately after, and there he was surrounded by a crowd of weeping 65 women, who kissed the hem of his robe and begged with piercing cries for news of their hus- bands and children. The good priest was touched to the heart but knew not what to do for them. A French officer presently came to him and told him that in the camp was a Huron Indian who had captured a baby of six months, and implored him to save it. Father Eoubeaud, glad to be able to relieve at least one of the sufferers, ran to the cabin of the Huron. He found the child in the arms of the savage, " tenderly kissing " his hands and playing with his porcelain beads. The good father began by praising the valor of the Huron people, but the Indian immediately guessed his object and said: "Hold! Do you see this baby? I have not stolen it. I found it left behind in haste. You want it but you shall not have it." Eoubeaud told him that the tiny prisoner was useless to him and would certainly die for want of proper food. The Huron produced some fat and said he would feed the baby that, and if it did die he would bury it in some corner of ground and the priest might then say all the prayers he pleased over it. The father offered a good sum in silver for the child, but the Indian re- fused. At last the fellow demanded anot he- English prisoner in exchange for the baby, and Father Eoubeaud would have undertaken to provide one had not some other Indians come in, with whom the Huron held a consultation, at which it was finally agreed that the priest 66 should have the child in exchange for an Eng- lish scalp. "It shall be forthcoming! " cried the good priest, " if j^ou are a man of honor," and he hastened off to the camp of his Abenaki disciples and asked the first Indian he met if he had any scalps and if he would do him a favor. The fel- low, with a savage's generositj-, immediately un- tied his scalp pouch and gave Roubeaud his choice. The priest selected a scalp, and, followed by a curious crowd of French and Canadians, ran to the tent of the Huron, " joy," in his own words, seeming " to furnish " him " wings." "See! " cried he, addressing the Huron, "see your paj'ment." "You are right! " said the savage nurse, ex- amining the scalp with the ej'e of a connoisseur, " it is indeed an English scalp, for it is red. Well, there is the child; carry it away, for it belongs to you." Fearing the Indian might change his mind, the good father hurried off with the babj^ wrapping it in his robe, for it was almost naked, the little creature crying by the way at his unaccustomed handling. He carried the habj to Fort William Henry, where all the women ran to him when they heard the wailings of the child, hoping to find their own lost babies. But none of them recognized it, and they all retired, weeping afresh over their own losses. This left Father Eou- beaud in an embarrassing position. The baby peemed as likely to die in his hands as in those 67 of the Huron. He was trying to think what he should do, when an English officer who spoke French approached, and the priest told him his trouble. " Sir," said Roubeaud, " I have just ransomed this young infant from slavery, but it will not escape death unless you direct some one of these women to take the place of its mother and nurse it, until I shall be able to provide for it other- wise." The English officer found a woman who con- sented to go to Canada as nurse to the baby if the priest would answer for her life and that of her husband and promise to send them back to Boston. Father Roubeaud agreed to do all this, and guarding the woman, her husband and the baby, with an escort of three grenadiers, took them to the Canadian camp on the Fort Edward road, where he lodged. Scarcely had the party reached this spot when a piercing cry arose and a woman came running toward them. She snatched the child from the arms of its new nurse and abandoned herself to transports of joy, for she was the mother of the baby. Roubeaud had the pleasure afterwards of reuniting the whole family, for he found the father of the child suf- fering from a wound made by the bursting of a shell, and he led the wife to his side in a lonely part of the fort where he had crawled on account of his pains. The woman who had agreed to act as nurse to the little captive afterwards found 68 her own baby, who was restored to her through the kindness of a French officer. Montcalm meanwhile was busy rescuing as many of the English prisoners as possible. Dur- ing the day he gathered together about four hun- dred of them. These poor creatures were so stripped of their clothing that the French general was obliged to buy it back of the savages who had plundered them. Some Indians, seized with contrition, voluntarily brought their captives to him, saying that they had had no sense. Others hastened down the lake with their prisoners, and at Montreal got a good price for them, the French being bound in honor to ransom them and return them to their country. Montcalm sent all the fugitives that he could collect to Fort Edward with a strong guard, which was hardly needed now as the Indians had sped away to their homes to decorate their wigwams w^ith subdivided scalps, boast of their exploits and suffer from the small- pox. The massacre of Lake George cost the French much of the fruits of their victory, and cast a stain on their honor, which, however unjust it might have been, was painful to them. The Eng- lish, claiming that the capitulation had been broken, refused to return the French prisoners or detain the garrison of the fort from further fighting, as had been agreed. The first exaggerated accounts of the massacre and the rumor that INIontcalm was advancing against Fort Edward and Albany struck terror 6 to the hearts of the g-arrison at the former place, and had Montcalm aj^peared he would, perhaps, have won an easy victory at Fort Edward. It was expected in Canada that he would do so. But the facts are that he had no wagons or horses, his Indians were g-one and he had sent his Canadians home that they might reap the harvests so sorely needed in Canada. Many of his men meanwhile were occupied in destroying Fort Wil- liam Henr3-; others were plying up and down the lake transporting the valuable stores taken with the fort to Ticonderoga, and he felt him- self in no condition to make a successful re- sistance should the enemy march to Lake George against him, for he knew nothing of the faint- hearted character of their general. Fort William Henry was razed to the ground, its wooden walls were thrown into a great heap and burned, the dead bodies in its casemates and underground passages feeding for days the flames of this immense bonfire. Seven days after the capitulation, having hidden stores of cannon balls and sunk some boats he was unable to carry off, Montcalm was on his way down the lake. He left one battalion encamped on an island, prob- ably Diamond Island, until the return of the boats, when they were brought off, and Lake George was once more a wilderness, scarred with siege works and the ruins of a fort and sown with the dead. 70 THE BATTLE OF ROGERS' ROCK. During- the winter of 1758 Fort Edward was the Englisli advance post and the lieadquarters of Rogers and liis rangers, who did their best to plague the French at Ticonderoga. Once they spent the night among the ruins of Fort William Henry, where they found a heap of charred logs and rafters and fragments of exploded cannon covered wdth a new fallen snow. These rough fellows stopped for a moment to mournfully re- call how they had here enjoyed " many of the pleasures of a soldier's life," before camping under the edge of the earthworks for shelter from a biting wind which was tearing up the lake. The sharp eyes of Rogers found some of the hidden cannon balls and discovered the sunken boats, of w^hich he took note, that they might be recovered. So active were these rangers that they w^ell-nigh drove the commandant at Ticon- deroga distracted, for they invaded the very ditches of the fort, took prisoners, burnt wood piles and butchered cattle, to the horns of one of which they once left tied an ironical note, signed by Rogers, in which he thanked the French officer for the fresh meat that he had enjoyed and sent his compliments to the Marquis de Mont- calm. About the middle of March, 1758, Rogers was sent scouting by the commander at Fort Edward, with a bodj^ of one hundred and eighty men. He encamped the first night at Halfw^ay Brook, so 71 named because it crossed the Lake George road midway between that body of water and Fort Edward. The next day he marched up the road to the head of Lake Georg-e and down the lake on the ice to the beginning- of the Narrows. He encamped for the night on the ea.st shore, set- ting sentinels at intervals on land and keeping men walking on the frozen lake all night for fear of a surprise. The whole party resumed their march at sunrise of the next day. A dog running across the ice alarmed Rogers, who feared that Indians were near, and he withdrew his men to the woods, where they donned snowshoes and labored along over four feet of snow to the neigh- borhood of Sabbathday Point, where they all rested until night, when they again took to the ice. An advance guard of skaters was sent out, while the main body marched on through the darkness, hugging the west shore and dragging toboggans loaded with their provisions. When the party was within eight miles of the lower end of the lake a messenger came skating back from the advance guard telling liogers to halt. The men promptly sat down on the ice, and Phillips, who commanded the advance, presently came up with the news that he had seen a fire on the east shore. Rogers immediately hid his baggage in a thicket and leaving a small guard with it marched to the east shore in search of the fire. It was not, however, to be found, and concluding that Phillips had mistaken patches of snow or phosphorescent wood for fire, he re- 72 turned to his toboggans and camped there. The fire had in fact been a real one, built by some French scouts, who when they had descried the dark, moving objects on the ice, quickly extin- guished it and returned to Fort Ticonderoga, where they gave warning of Kogers' stolen march. At Ticonderoga a party of two hundred Indians and a number of Canadians and French volunteers was immediately made up to march against the pestilential Rogers. Ignorant that the enemy was warned, Rogers took up his march, the next day, through the woods back of the mountains on the west shore. The advance to avoid the deep snow took its way along the frozen surface of Trout Brook while the other party on snowshoes kept under the edge of the mountain. It chanced that the French and Indians had chosen this same stfeam for their approach from Ticonderoga. It was three o'clock in the afternoon and Rogers was about west of the mountain which bears his name when his ad- vance discovered some ninety Indians coming to- ward them on the icy surface of the little stream. Rogers, who was on rising ground, immediately faced his men toward the brook and when the In- dians came up opened fire on them. A number of them fell and the rest fled, about half of Rogers' men rushing off in pursuit. They cut down several of the fugitives with hatchets and cutlasses, but they suddenly found themselves face to face with a large force of soldiers who chased them back to Rogers' position, killing fifty of them by the 73 way. thoug-h Rogers' party numbered now only about one hundred and thirty men and the French and Indians were twice or three times as numer- ous, he made a stubborn resistance. His men occupied a rising ground and sheltered them- selves behind trees where they fought gallantly until sunset. Again and again the French tried to get in his rear, and failed. At last two hun- dred of the enemy began ascending the mountain on his right for this purpose. Rogers hurried forward Lieutenant Phillips and eighteen men to occupy this spot before them, but it was too late. Phillips was surrounded, the men in Rogers' front were becoming intermingled with the enemy, and one hundred and eight of them had fallen, when at last the remnant broke and fled, each man looking out for himself. Phillips and his men surrendered on promise of good treatment, but they had better have fought till the last man was killed, for the Indians, furious over the losses which they had sustained, tied them to trees and hacked them to pieces. ROGERS' SLIDE. There was the usual chase. The wounded and fatigued fell an easy prey to the Indians. Rogers, followed by about twenty men, ran up the moun- tain, stopping from time to time to fire upon the pursuers. It is at this point that the legend comes in which connected the name of the bold ranger leader forever with Lake George. Rogers, it is said, reached the summit of this mountain alone in his flight and walking to the edge of \ its immense rocky precipice, put his snowshoes on backward and walked back to a spot where he could clamber down to the lake, thus deceiving ' the pursuing* Indians who when thej' reached | the summit of the rock thought by the tracks j that two men had thrown themselves down it, ■ and seeing Eogers below running on the ice con- . eluded that there was some work of evil spirits j in this and gave up the chase. Eogers does not j tell this tale in his own journal, which is, how- j ever, but a bald narrative, bare of detail, and in 1 which he was evidently anxious to represent him- self as making as orderly a retreat as possible. The name of the rock bears testimony to the J early belief in the truth of the story. Rogers and the few remaining fugitives soon | found one another on the wide expanse of the i frozen lake. There were a few wounded men j among them when they got together at the place i where they had hidden their toboggans. A mes- i senger was dispatched to Fort Edward for help, and the fugitives spent a cheerless night, without fire or blankets, the latter having been left with their knapsacks on the field of battle. The i wounded suffered much, but did not complain. j The next day they all made their way down to : Hoop (probably Dome) Island, and here they were met by a relief party from Fort Edward. j The French rejoiced in the idea that Rogers j had been killed, for his overcoat and papers were ^ found on the battlefield; but they found to their • cost, six weeks later, that he was still living- and ranging- when he paid them a visit in his old style, killing- one man and taking- three prisoners, almost under the walls of Crown Point. THE BATTLE OF TICONDEKOGA. Bj^ the year 1758 the great Eng-lish minister, Pitt, was in power, and he planned vig-orous at- tacks upon Canada from various points. One of these was to be directed against Ticonderoga, the history of which comes within the province of the story of Lake George, as its very existence as a fortress grows out of its command of the north- ern entrance to this lake. By the conquest of Ticonderoga and by thus gaining control of Lake Champlain and its outlet into the St. Lawrence, Pitt hoped to cut Canada in two. The command of this expedition was given to General Aber- cromby, a heavj' and dull man, but with him was associated a young nobleman, Lord Howe, who was to be the real leader. Lord Howe's rivals and military associates pronounced him the " noblest Englishman of his day " and " a com- plete model of military virtue." The Americans had long been very jealous of English officers, who were prone to give themselves airs, and treated the former with a condescension which sorely wounded their pride, but they all loved this young nobleman. One of his virtues was a power of accommodating himself to the shifts of a frontier life, common to Frenchmen but rare among Englishmen. Lord Howe was so eager % indeed to learn the conditions of American wai that he made a friend of the famous Rogers anc^ joined him on one of his scouts about Lake George, wearing snowshoes, eating Indian meai and sleeping on a bearskin in the woods, that he might learn how frontiersmen marched, ambushed and retreated. In June, 1758, an army of sixteen thousand men arrived at the head of Lake George and en- camped on a spot known as Fort Gage. There were nearly ten thousand Americans and over six thousand English regular soldiers, who rue- full}^ regarded themselves as ridiculous figures, for Lord Howe had made them cut off their hair and coattails, wear leather leggings and brown the barrels of their polished guns that these might not be so readily seen in the woods. Each man carried with him thirty pounds of corn meal, and all were astonished to discover that in this way an English army could subsist for a month with- out the aid of a provision train. Officers were allowed no bed but a bearskin and no baggage but one small portmanteau each. Howe even abolished the women camp followers and washed his own linen in a brook, as an example to others to do the same. While the army was encamped at the head of Lake George he one day invited some of the officers to dine in his tent. Here they found bearskins for carpets, logs for seats, a big dish of pork and beans set on the ground for a feast and not the vestige of a plate or knife and fork to be seen. The dismaj^ed Englishmen seated themselves around the one dish and tried to look unconcerned, while Howe took out a pocket knife and fork and began to cut up the meat. " Is it possible, gentlemen," he exclaimed, " that you have come on this campaign without providing yourselves with what is necessary I " Whereupon he presented each one of them with a pocket knife and fork in a leather sheath, like his own. Before this, English officers had been in the. habit of burdening the baggage train of an army with beds, dishes and delicacies and cumbering the army with men and women serv- ants, that they might live luxuriously. With such a general, for Lord Howe was in fact the general, it is not strange that everything pro- gressed more rapidly than on former expeditions at Lake George. On the evening of the fourth of July all the stores were loaded in the boats which lined the beach, at the head of the lake, and by sunrise of the fifth the men were all em- barked — the largest army which had ever ap- peared on Lake George. There were nine hun- dred bateaux, or flat-bottomed boats, over thirty feet long, and one hundred and thirty-five whale boats, loaded to the brim, besides a great many heavy flatboats, which carried the artillery, and two *' floating castles," or batteries. The Eng- lish regular soldiers, in their scarlet coats, were in the center, the Americans on either side. It was a sparkling midsummer day; flags were flying, brass bands and bagpipes were plaj'ing. 7^ bugles olowing, and the men were in high spirits, thinking they had never seen so fine an army nor so lovelj' a sheet of water. For three miles the lake was entirely, as it seemed, covered with boats. When the army entered the Narrows it stretched out in lines, six miles long. It was late in the afternoon of Saturday when the fleet of boats reached Sabbathday Point and made a halt. There the men ate and rested, and here Lord Howe lay down on a bearskin beside John Stark, the ranger, afterwards the Revolutionary' general, and learned from him all he knew about Ticon- deroga and the country around it. It was already after midnight, and Sunday morning, when the armj^ embarked once more, and hence the name of the point where these six- teen thousand men rested. Silently and with muffled oars the mighty fleets of boats passed on down the lake, their scarlet uniforms bursting suddenly upon the view of the French advance guard, perched on the summit of Rogers' Rock, as the boats came around a point at early sun- rise. Lord Howe pushed ahead of the army in a whaleboat with Rogers and some others to reconnoiter the landing place, then known as the " Burnt Camp," and not far from the Baldwin of our day. He found that the French had but a small guard here, and returned to the army to assist it in landing. By twelve o'clock the men were all ashore, the French had retired and Rogers and his rangers w^ere sent ahead to scout and drive away any more of the enemy that 79 mig'ht be lurkiiif,'" Jihoiit. Tlie French 1)urned, as thej' retired, the bridge over the stream of the outlet which makes a loop between Lake George and . the fort, and were encamped within this loop, near the falls. It was decided to march the English army through the woods, around the loop, to avoid the difficulty of crossing" in the face of the enemy. Divided into four columns, the men beg-an their march. Lord Howe, who was only too daring-, at their head with a body of rangers under Putnam. The trees were enor- mous, the woods were cumbered with fallen trunks and the ground was so rough and broken near the falls in the stream of the outlet that the English ranks, when they reached this point, became confused. It chanced that the French party which had watched the English landing, from Eogers' Rock, retired behind the mountains by the wav* of Trout Brook Valley and came out near the stream at the same time that the English advance was floundering over the rocks at this place. " Qui etes vous? " cried the French. " Francais! " answered the rangers, who had had lessons of Rogers, but their pronunciation was probably not deceptive, for the veritable French immediately opened fire. The very first volley killed the invaluable and gallant young leader, Lord Howe. A panic immediately seized the English, always at a loss in the forests of America. " Entire regiments flung themselves one atop of the other," and General Abercrombj' 80 was near being- drag-g-ed away by the fugitives. The rangers, however, were not so easily alarmed. They held their ground, fighting- courageously, Rogers, with another body of frontiersmen, and the American reg-iments of Fitch and Lyman com- ing- to their assistance. Caught between the two forces, the French fought savagely. When at last they broke many plunged into the stream at the falls and were drowned or shot there. But fifty out of three hundred escaped. One hundred and forty-eight were captured; the rest were killed. The English lost only ten killed and six wounded, but among the dead was Lord Howe, the soul of the expedition. The Americans mourned him deeply, and afterwards with their own money raised a monument to him in Westminster Abbey. General Abercromby, who had well nigh been run off with by his own men, kept the army in indecision all night in the woods and retired to the landing place on Lake George in the morn- ing. Men were set to rebuild the bridges de- stroyed by the French, and the English moved forward and occupied the camp within the loop of the stream, which had been occupied by the French until late on the day before, at which time Montcalm had decided to retire to the high grounds back of Ticonderoga. This fort, known as Carillon to the French, was built in the usual manner of that day of tw^o log walls filled in with earth. On the rocky plateau back of the fort the French hastily threw up a barricade of logs topjDcd with bags of earth and sods. Outside 81 of this they felled a huge abatis of primeval trees with the branches turned outward and many of them sharpened. They worked hard on their barricade. All they wanted was time, and Gen- eral Abercrombj', by his indecision and his retreat to the landing place to make a new start, gave it to them. Montcalm, however, felt that he was in a desperate situation. He had less than four thou- sand men, he believed that the enemy had twenty or thirty thousand, his works could not long withstand artillery, and there was danger that the English might cut him off from Canada by getting between him and Crown Point. Aber- cromby, on the other hand, supposed that Mont- calm was six thousand strong and would soon receive large reinforcements. Accordingly he de- cided not to await a regular siege but hasten to take Ticonderoga by assault. On the eighth of July, after some harmless firing from Indians, who had just arrived under Sir AYilliam John- son, the English came on, and the French dropped their shovels and axes to take up their arms. The English, who approached in three columns, became terribly entangled in the abatis and all order was lost. The men pushed on, however, but almost all those who approached to within fifteen paces of the works were surely killed, and some hung dead on the sharpened branches of the abatis. The Kiiglisli retired. The French works could not to l)e taken at the point of the bayonet, they 82 said. Abercrombj', who was himself well in the rear, ordered them on again, and on they went into the mass of trees, under the terrific triple fire of an enemy of whom they could see nothing- but some caps projecting' above the sods of the ramparts. They tried one point, they tried an- other; they combined to attack the rig-ht, the cen- ter and the left. To each threatened point Mont- calm, in his shirt sleeves, for it was hot, ran with reinforcements, and the French shouted: "Vive le roi! Vive notre g-eneral! " and the bullets whistled. Twenty bateaux were sent down the stream below the falls to get around the fort but its cannon sunk two of them and the rest retired. Six times their own indomitable courage and the stupid stubbornness of their general flung the Eng'lish against the French defenses; for six hours they struggled up in face of a mur- derous fire. Once a French officer in his excite- ment tied a handkerchief to his gun and waved it in defiance. Some of the English, taking this for a sign of surrender, ran forward, hoWing their muskets above their heads and crying, *' Quarter! " The French, supposing in their turn that these men wished to surrender, mounted ihe breastworks to receive them, but an officer convinced them that they were fooled, when they delivered a volley at the English, who thereupon took it all for a bit of French deceit. A Ehode Island man named William Smith managed to get under the very edge of the breastworks, 7 83 where he contrived to kill several Frenchmen. At last the3^ discovered him, and firing down on him wounded him g-ravely; but he sprang- up nevertheless and brained a Frenchman on the other side of the barricade with his hatchet. An Eng-lish officer who saw this action sent men to bring- him off. At five o'clock the Eng-lish made a determined assault upon the rig-ht of the French, hewing- their way to the foot of the breastworks, dying- Scotch- men in the Hig-hland reg-iment calling lo their comrades " not to lose a thoug-ht upon them but to mind the honor of their country." Their major, Campbell, of Inverawe, who, according- to tra- dition, had been warned of his death at an un- known place named Ticonderoga bj' the ghost of a murdered cousin whose slayer he unwittingly sheltered, was wounded in the arm and died in- stead at Fort Edward, rather, it seems to me, of the unskilful surgery of the day than of the injury. Twenty- -five Highland officers were killed or wounded in this fierce assault, one of their captains and a few men even mounting the breast- works and gaining the inside, where they were bayoneted. All was in vain. One more effort was made at six o'clock and then the English fell back, the rangers and some other Americans keeping up a distant fire to cover the retreat and the removal of the wounded. The English lost about nineteen hundred, some six hundred of whom were killed outright. The French losses >vere three hundred and seventv-seven. Never had 84 human life and courage been more shamefully thrown away. The English had still abundant forces and all the cannon for a siege, but the}' were disheartened by their bitter and wasteful defeat and they were without a leader. To the astonishment of the French they were soon in full retreat up Lake Georg-e, bearing- with them their sorrowful burden of wounded and their wooden-headed general, and leaving behind them baggage, provisions, everj'thing, even to a number of shoes stuck in the mud of a marsh through which the army hastened. The men w^ere greatly disgusted with Abercrombj^ and he was afterwards known to his own soldiers as " Mrs. Nabby Cromby." PUTNAM'S ADVENTURE. After the Battle of Ticonderoga Abercromby lay at the head of Lake George. He busied his men in rebuilding Fort William Henry and level- ing the siege works of Montcalm, on the site of the present village of Caldwell, while detachments of the army were sent to other points, where the war was carried on with more vigor. Montcalm, who was meanwhile reinforced, lay at Ticon- deroga, strengthening and improving the hasty works which had heli:)ed him to withstand the determined assault of Abercromby's army. He also sent large parties of men down South Bay to cut off the English supplies as they were hauled up from Fort Edw^ard. One of these par- ties succeeded in destroying a large wagon train 85 and killing one hundred and sixteen men, at Half- ^vay lirook, and Abercroniby immediately des- patched Ivogers with seven hundred men down Lake Georg-e and across the mountains on the east shore to waylay the Frenchmen who had destroyed the wagons. Rogers arrived at South Bay too late to intercept the enemy. He 'was on his return to Lake George when he was met by messengers from Abercromby with orders to turn back and go in search of a party which had been reported as hovering about Fort Edward. Rogers made his way back to the crumbling ruins of Fort Anne for this purpose, and here he encamped for the night. Though he had forbidden fires, for fear of discovery, he and an English officer who was of the party so far forgot caution as to fire at a mark the following morning be- fore breaking camp, that they might decide a wager. It happened that the five hundred Indians and French, under the leadership of a famous French partisan, named Marin, of whom Rogers was in search, were within earshot of this firing and im- mediately laid a semicircular ambush across the path leading to Fort Edward, where it ran through a dense thicket which had grown up in the former clearing around Fort Anne. After the wager had been settled Rogers' party took up their march in single file along the narrow path through the overgrown clearing. Major Israel Putnam taking the lead. Just at the approach to the larger woods the Indians fired, and a large 86 Caughnawaga sprang* upon Putnam, whose g"un failed him when he snapped it at the fellow's breast. He was captured and the Indian bound him to a tree. The rangers pushed their way up to the point of attack, greatly impeded by the young- sapling-s of the clearing. The fight was an obstinate one. Once the rangers fell back and the Indians and French pressed upon them. Again, the French retreated and made a stand farther on. These movements left the unfor- tunate Putnam tied to a tree between two fires. The bullets flew around him, often lodging in the tree to which he was bound, and several cut the sleeves and skirts of his coat. At last the French and Indians gradually fell away, but not until the Caughnawaga had unbound Putnam and taken him along. Rogers remained on the battle- field and buried the dead. He then made litters of the branches of trees and carried the wounded toward Fort Edward, until he was met by a de- tachment wdth wagons. Putnam, left meanw^hile to the mercy of a brutal and defeated foe, after having been robbed of coat, vest, shoes and stockings by the savages and hit with the muzzle of a gun by a petty French officer, was driven through the woods by his captors, his bare feet bleeding, his back laden with the packs of their wounded and his hands tied together so tightly that they swelled. The torture of his w-rists was so great that he begged the Indians to kill him, and a French officer who heard the request untied his 87 hands and removed some of the burdens from his back, while his captor furnished him a pair of moccasins. Before they had completed their march, however, a savage wantonly wounded him on the cheek with a tomahawk. When night had come the Indians bound Putnam to a stake, and gathering dry wood piled it about him. They set fire to the wood, but a summer shower put out the flames. The shower soon passed and the wood was lighted again. The Indians danced and yelled around their victim as the flames rose and he began to writhe with the torture of the fire. It was at this moment that the French leader, Marin, rushed through the fiendish crowd, and scatter- ing the burning brushwood, cut Putnam loose from the stake, storming the while at the Indians for their crueltj-. He then turned Putnam over cO his savage master, who it seems was not un- willing to preserve his prisoner. When the latter found that Putnam was unable to eat hard bread on account of his wounded cheek he moistened some for him. The captive was secured for the night in a common Indian fashion, by the tying of his legs and arms, as he lay on the ground, to young saplings, and laying slender poles across his body, on the ends of which some Indians slept that they might be awakened by his least movement. As he lay thus he smiled to think of his ridiculous plight. The next day he was led to Ticonderoga, the Indians showing on the way by menacing gestures how great was their (lisapjwintment at having missed their night's en- tertainment. From Ticonderog'a he was removed to Canada, where he was kindly treated and presently exchanged. LAST SCENES OF THE FRENCH WAR ABOUT LAKE GEORGE. In spite of Montcalm's victory at Tieonderoga it was but a few days later that he began to fore- see the necessity of abandoning this important post.' Canada was by this time in great distress; her people were suffering for food, she was gov- erned by a ring of speculators who were amass- ing fortunes out of her ruin, and France was no longer able to come to her aid, one of her min- isters saying that when the house was on fire it was impossible to think of the stable. Though Pitt's schemes had failed at Tieonderoga, they succeeded on Lake Ontario, where the taking of Fort Frontenac cut oil Canada's connection with her inland posts. The capture of Louisburg mean- while had gained the control of the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and the fall of Fort DuQuesne lost P'rance the Ohio Valley. The hand of the great English minister was felt everywhere except at Lake George, where Lord Howe was dead and " Mrs. Xabby Cromby " ruled supreme. The final great struggle came in 1759, when General Wolfe advanced against Quebec. To co- operate with him from the rear eleven thousand men gathered at Lake George under General Am- herst, who was to make a descent into Canada 80 by way of Lake George, Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrenee. General Amherst was a new style of commander to these regions — a famous fort builder. Wherever he went forts were sown broadcast — no frontier log* walls, but line, expen- sive stone affairs. Ignoring- the one which Aber- cromby had begun the year before on the site of Fort William Henry, Amherst laid out an exten- sive work, named Fort George, on the spot where the former entrenched camp had stood. Only one bastion of this massive affair was ever finished. Amherst's fort building energies were not alone devoted to this work, but posts were erected at intervals on the road between Lake George and Fort Edward, particularly at Halfway Brook, while the woods were cut for a wide distance along this track that wagon trains might no longer be in danger of Indian surprises. The army at Lake George was in 1759 composed half of English regular troops and half of Americans. The men were drilled in firing by platoons and practised in firing at marks and in forest war- fare; they cut marsh hay for hospital beds, scouted, made spruce beer to Avard off the scurvy, amused themselves with fishing and swimming and were marched to the lake " every fair day " to wash their faces and hands. It was the twenty-first of July when Amherst's men gathered together in boats on the beach at the head of Lake George and embarked for Tieon- deroga. Once more a noble army covered the waters of the lake and moved through its length, 90 to the sound of martial music. At night at the lo\ver end of the lake this fleet of boats was struck by a summer gale but weathered it safely and landed next morning, after driving back the French at the landing j)lace. The French at Ticonderoga were commanded now bj' an officer named Burlamaque. He had almost as many men as had Montcalm the year before, when Abercromby was routed, but he had orders to abandon the forts on Lake Champlain when the English should appear and retire to an island in the Kichelieu River, where he could the more easily defend Montreal, for it was seen that the branches must be abandoned since the heart of the colony was at stake. For fear that the Eng- lish might suspect his plans and cut off his re- treat Burlamaque busily strengthened the works of Ticonderoga as though he meant to make a determined defense. The barricade w^hich Aber- cromby's men had so vainly stormed the year before was now abandoned, though it was more stronglj^ built of earth and logs, and the English encamped under its very edge for shelter from the cannon of the fort. The first night after the arrival of the enemy Burlamaque secretly retired from Ticonderoga, leaving an officer named Hebe- court with four hundred men to defend the works a while longer and detain the English. General Amherst began a regular siege in a manner which would probably have reduced this post the year before. For four daj's the garrison kept up a steady cannonade upon the besieging 91 army until Amherst's batteries were nnally erected and ready to open fire the next day. It was then that at ten o'clock at nig-ht three de- serters came running- into the Eng-lish camp with news that Hebecourt and the garrison were mak- ing" off in boats, having- left a slow match burn- ing in the powder magazines of the fort. Loth to see a tort destroyed, Amherst offered a hun- dred guineas to the one of these men who would lead the way to the match, that it might be cut, but this was beyond the courage of a deserter, and an hour later there was a tremendous ex- plosion. One bastion only of the fort was blown up. The barracks, however, were burned, and while there still remained danger of more ex- plosions, a sergeant risked his life to haul down the French flag still flj'ing on the ramparts of Ticonderoga. Shortly afterward the French abandoned and destroyed Crown Point, on the approach of Am- herst, and retired to Isle-aux-Xoix, in the Riche- lieu River, where they fortified themselves " to the teeth." As the French had several vessels on Lake Champlain Amherst was obliged to spend the summer and fall waiting for the building of a small fleet of vessels, out of boards made at a primitive sawmill at Ticonderoga, which often broke down under the strain. In tliis way the warm season was wasted and Wolfe took (Quebec without Amherst's aid, though the latter general had the satisfaction of building a tine new fort at Crown Point. 92 The following j'ear, 1760, Brig-adier General Haviland descended Lake George on his way to aid in the final conquest of the remnant of Canada which still held out. He reached ]Montreal by way of Lake Champlain about the same time that armies from the upper and lower St. Lawrence did, and combined with them to bring about the fall of this town, with which the conquest of Canada was complete. Lake George slumbered once more in solitude, until the breaking out of the war of the Revolution. ETHAN AI.I.EN AT TICONDEROGA. For fifteen years Ticonderoga's guns slept, its garrison of forty-eight men amusing themselves as best they might and its parade a play ground for soldiers' children and the sons of one or two frontier farmers who had invaded this country. With the fall of Canada, indeed, this great water route had lost its strategic value, but with the first breaking out of the Revolutionary war its possession became once more of vast importance. There were men in Xew England who immedi- ately saw this and the necessit}' for quick action to forestall the English government; and thus it came about that one night in the May of 1775 Ethan Allen with two hundred and thirty Green Mountain boys arrived opposite Ticonderoga. Boats were scarce but Allen secured enough to set over himself and eightj-three men, together with a farmer's boy who knew the way to the wicket gate of the fort, which stood open. As morning was fast approaching" and all depended on a surprise Allen did not wait for the return of the boats with the remainder of the men, but after haranguing those he had and appealing to their pride in the reputation of the Green Moun- tain boys for dash, he marched them to the wicket gate, where the sentinel snapped his gun at him and then ran within the fort to hide under a bomb proof. The Green Moun- tain boys were not slow in following him and were soon forming on the parade within the fort, facing the barracks on either side and giving three huzzas to rouse the sleeping men. Allen slashed at one of the sentries who made a pass at one of his officers and then forced him to lead the way to the commandant's sleeping room, w here he thundered at the door of Captain Dela- place, for this was his name, threatening to sacri- fice the whole garrison if he did not immediately appear. The captain hastened to comply, his breeches in his hands. *' Deliver me this fort, instantly," said Allen. " By what authority do you demand it? " asked Delaplace. " In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress! " replied Ethan Allen, who is said to have had about as much respect for the one authority as the British commandivnt had for the other. Allen enforced his commands by holding a drawn sword over the captain's head, and his men having by this time beaten down the doors of the 94 other barracks the fort was soon in the hands of the Green Mountain boys, who, when their com- rades had arrived from across the w-ater; " tossed around the flowing- bowl," to signalize their con- quest. The spoils were one hundred and twenty cannon, some swivels and mortars, tons of musket balls, flints, shells, small arms, powder, flour, pork, beans, peas and materials for boat building. By the orders of Congress the captured cannon and stores were removed to the head of Lake George for safe keeping, as Congress declared, until " the restoration of harmony," which in that early stage of the war was much talked about between England and her colonies. As a matter of fact many of these cannon afterwards figured in the siege of Boston, for they were removed from Lake George the next winter on fifty sledges, drawn by eighty yoke of oxen, and reached Bos- ton ia time to make it possible for Washington to drive the Ewglish army out of that city. BENJAMIN FKANKLIN ON LAKE GEORGE. At the outset of the Revolutionaiy war the Americans thought to carry everything by dash, and the fall o-f Ticonderoga was followed by a hasty invasion of Canada, which in the spring of 1776 bade fair to fail because of the smallpox, poverty and the ill-will of the Canadians, tired of the exactions of invaders. Congress sent com- missioners to Canada to try to unravel their army's entangled affairs. They were Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll, of 95 Carrollton. They ascended the Hudson in a sloop and were four days making- the journey. At Albany they were entertained by General Schuyler, his wife and two lively, black-eyed daughters, Betsey and Pegg-y, all of whom ac- companied the gentlemen in a springless wagon to their country home at Saratoga. Here they waited a week for the ice in Lake George to show signs of breaking up, Franklin suffering greatly from the fatigue of the journey-. On the sixteenth of April the commissioners took their way to Lake George. Snow was still on the ground and when after two days of hard riding they reached the head of the lake they found the ice still float- ing about in the water in large cakes. General Schuyler had gone before them to prepare a boat, and he had a bateau, thirty-six feet long, eight wide and one foot deep, fitted up with a sail and awning made of blankets. This primitive craft set sail on Lake George at one o'clock on April the nineteenth, 1776. She made four miles and then the passengers went ashore and made tea. It took thirty-six hours to descend the lake in the boat of the blanket sail, battered about as she was by cakes of floating ice, Carroll indulging by the way in regrets that it was too early in the season to catch the famous fish of these waters. The bateau was placed on wheels and drawn across the neck of land between Lake George and Lake Champlain by six yoke of oxen. The com- missioners reached Canada in the course of time and found the case of the armv hopeless in case 8 96 of the approach of an English army. Franklin- suffering- from the hardshijjs of the journey and the gout, returned through Lake George in the boat of the blanket sail, junketing by the way on land at various points, and journeyed down the Hudson, by wagon, his bones well-nigh broken on the stony and gullied road he traversed, such being the perils of American travel in 1776. BURGOYNE IN CONTROL OF LAKE GEORGE. Once more a great army descended through the Champlain Valley, but this time it was an Eng- lish instead of a French — Englishmen ranged against those Americans by whose side they had fought seventeen years before, and bent upon cut- ting the rebellious colonies in two by way of the Hudson Valley. In the summer of 1777 General Burgoyne with an army of ten thousand men sailed up Lake Champlain and captured Ticon- deroga without a blow by erecting- -a battery on a mountain overlooking its wori, The Ameri- cans had been to much pains to strengthen this fort and great was their disappointment at its loss. The fall of Ticonderoga induced them to abandon Fort George, for if the former work could be overlooked by cannon the latter could much more easily be tauten in the same way. The uselessness of these fortifications of the French struggle, in the War of Independence^ shows how great had been the improvement in the science of war in the few years that had in- tervened. General Schuyler was unjustly blamed A mountain strtani. 97 for the abandonment of these two posts and was oblig"ed to defend himself to General Washing-- ton, in the Fort George matter, by explaining that Fort George was but a bastion of an unfin- ished fort, in which was but one barrack, capable of holding not more than thirty or forty men. There was no cistern and no picket to keep the enemy from overrunning the wall. It was com- manded by the old Fort William Henry site, " within point blank shot," and five hundred men might have lain, he said, between " this extreme- ly defensible fortress " and the lake without being discovered by its garrison. After the chase of the Ticonderoga garrison the English army assembled at Skeenesborough, as Whitehall was then called, at the head of Lake Champlain, and Burgoj-ne chose to march from this jDlace to Fort Edward instead of returning to Ticonderoga to take the easier route through Lake George and by way of the old military road of the French war. The Skeenesborough route, which involved much the most land travel, was made immensely more difficult by General Schuy- ler, who had caused ditches to be dug, bridges to be broken and trees to be felled across what road then existed. Besides removing these ob- stacles, Burg03ne was obliged to build more than forty bridges across streams and marshes, one of which was more than two miles long. This ex- pensive road building detained the army so long' as to give the Americans time to recover from their first disheartenment and gather their forces 98 for a resistance. The English general was after- ward blamed for choosing the Fort Anne route and foolishly made the feeble excuse that Fort Georg-e would have detained him too long. It has been said that Major Skeene, the Tory founder of Whitehall, persuaded his friend, Burgoyne, to take this route that a good road might be built between his town and Fort Edward. However that may be, Lake George afterwards became the route for the forwarding of stores, and portions of Burgoyne's army went south this wa}'. The English early occupied the abandoned Fort George, but they thought it so indefensible that a garrison was also placed on Diamond Island, to afford protection to the numbers of boats which were now daily plying up and down the waters of Lake George. Burgoyne did not imitate the spartan example of Lord Howe, for his army wa& cumbered by the transportation of various luxu- ries for the use of the officers, and ever}' night, even up to the verj' eve of final misfortune, he dined heaviljr in his tent, leaving mounds of wine bottles at his camping places. All seemed more like a pleasure excursion than an invasion, and while the English were yet making triump)hant though slow progress southward two ladies made their way through Lake George to join their hus- bands, who were officers in the English army. They were the first women to see this lake, except the few wives of common soldiers and camp fol- lowers. Lad}^ Harriet Ackland. " a delicate little piece of quality," went through here in search of 99 her husband, who had been wounded near Ticon- derog-a. Her story is a romantic one. Major Ackland was again wounded, and captured as well, in the Battle of Saratog-a. Lady Ackland made the perilous journey to the American camp one rainy night, under the protection of an Eng-- lish chaplain, that she might nurse her husband. The major recovered but afterward fell in a duel in England, Lady Ackland lost her mind lor some time after his death, though he wa^- a rude, drinking man, but she finally recovered and mar- ried the chaplain who had had -the devotion to ac- company her on that perilous expedition in the rain to the American army, after the Battle of Saratoga. Another lady to make the journey up Lake George, during* the summer, was the Baroness de Eiedesel, wife of the German general of that name in Burgojne's army. She had three little children with her, one a young baby, and two maids. She had come all the way from Germany alone, in spite of the opposition of her family, that she might be with her husband and be assured from day to daj^ of his safety. After a tedious jour- ney she had reached the army in Canada but a few days before its departure and had begged to be allowed to follow him, promising to bear every- thing and make no complaints. He refused to take her, but some time later when Lady Ack- land joined the army he sent an officer after her and she and her famih* made the journey through Lake Champlaln and Lake George and reached the English camp at Fort Edward, shortly before com- 100 mimication was cut off between the armj'- ancj Lake Georg'e. She was perfectly happy to dine with her husband in a barn and lodge in any settler's house that might be found. She traveled in a calash which had been broug-ht from Can- ada for this purpose. When misfortune befell the British army she retreated to a cellar with her children, where she was crowded in with the wounded and dying", and finally when the capitu- lation took place drove into the American camp, trembling" at the ordeal, but only to be g"reeted with tears by the kind General Schuyler, who took her children in his arms and kissed them. Tie entertained them all in his own home in Al- bany. This noble German lady was long a i)ris- oner in America, where two more of her children were born, one of which she named America and the other Canada. Burg"oyne did not wish to build posts along" the Hudson to protect his communications with Lak^ Georg'e, choosing" rather to wait at Fort Edward until enoug"h supplies had been broug-ht throug"h this lake to last the army for a month and then abandon his communications and march on for Albany. THE BATTLE OF DIAMOND ISLAND. While Burg-oyne was on his march to Albany an adventurous American officer. Colonel Brown, surprised Ticonderog-a on the tenth of September. He captured two hundred and ninetj'-three men of the English regiment at the landing place at 1 101 the lower end of the lake, besides several cannon, a sloop and two hundred bateaux, at the same time releasing- one hundred American prisoners whom he found in captivity there. He summoned the fort to surrender but had no means of forcing" it to do so, so he fitted out instead a fleet of twenty sail, of the captured boats, three only of which were armed, the larg-est vessel carrying- only three cannon. These boats he manned with about four hundred and twenty men, among^ whom were the recaptured Americans, and sailed against Diamond Island. It must at best have been a primitive-looking fleet, with its one sloop and the awkward flat-bottomed bateaux, fitted perhaps with the blanket sails which prevailed on Lake George in early dajs. Brown's plan was to make the distance in one nig-ht and so surprise the garrison; but a heavy storm came on and forced him to anchor at Sabbathday Point at mid- nig-ht of the twenty-second of September. Here he captured a small boat in which was a man named Ferry, a sutler, recently deserted from the American army, who, however, escaped later in the night and warned Captain Aubrey, command- ing at Diamond Island, of his danger. Tlie next day the motley fleet of Brown ascended the lake as far as Fourteen Mile Island and anchored ag-ain on account of hig-h winds. The following- morn- ing, the twenty-fourth of September, Brown ad- vanced to the attack of Diamond Island. The three armed boats attacked the north end of the island and the others parted to the right and left 102 to try if at any point a landing might be made. The English fired first and Brown returned their fire " in good earnest." The enemy were well entrenched and had many well mounted cannon. Brown made a bold attack, giving them as hot a fire as he could. The battle lasted for an hour and a half and until Brown was forced to abandon one of his boats and tow off his sloop, which was hulled. The English sent gunboats in pur- suit of him, but he made good his retreat into Dunham's Bay, where he burned his boats and escaped through the woods, leaving his wounded in charge of the inhabitants of the neighboring country whom he had rescued from their im- prisonment at Ticonderoga. This g'allant little adventure was so soon fol- lowed by the surrender of Burgoyne's whole army at Saratoga that it has been w^ell-nigh forgotten in historj". With the fall of Burgoyne, which discouraged the English from venturing far from the sea coast and a supporting fleet, and secured the French Alliance for the United States, all war on Lake George ended. Fort George and Fort Ticonderoga fell into ruins, while Diamond Island, dug over for its crystals, was forgotten as a fortification, and people wondered when, not many years since, a brass cannon was seen imbedded in the water near there. 103 EARLY VISITORS AT LAKE GEORGE. Washing-ton ^vas the father of Lake George travel. In the summer of 1783, while he was waiting- for the evacuation of New York, before the final disbanding- of his army, he came north, made the journey through Lake George, and after visiting Ticonderoga and Crown Point reascended the lake on his return. The only conveyance of those days on the lake was the flat-bottomed bateaux, wdth blanket sail, and no doubt Wash- ington landed at various points and islands on the lake to cook and eat his meals. Soon after the Revolution the shores of Lake George were invaded by settlers, who cleared a few farms on its shores and sp)ent much time in the deer hunt, one man being known to kill as many as thirty deer a year in its waters. The rude forerunner of the Lake George Hotel appeared at an early date. Some of the first pleasure-seekers of distinction to visit this already famous spot were General Schuyler, President Dwight of Yale College and Aaron Burr. James Caldwell, a rich Albany merchant, founded the village of the same name at the head of the lake, where his descendants still own large tracts of land. Visitors came in ever-increasing numbers and in 1825 one of them, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, found the earliest Lake George steamboat, the Mountaineer, plying on these waters. And now at last Lake George was no longer to be the haunt of bloodthirstv braves; no more 104 was it the arena of a fierce strife between two great nations eng-ag-ed in a death strug-gle for the control of a continent. Peaceful pleasure parties only sought its waters and summer homes grew up on its shores. But those who seek it for pleasure, health and rest may well give a thought to the honest fellows who left its earth sown with their bones, who dyed its waters with their blood and who enriched its natural beauties with the memories of their brave deeds. POINTS OF HISTORIC INTEREST ON AND ABOUT LAKE GEORGE. The Site of the Battle of Lake George, 1755, lies on some partially improved property north of the Fort George Road, and across the railroad from about the middle of the beach, at the head of Lake George. Entrenchments may still be traced in the woods on this tract of land, and the Militarj^ Spring under the edge of a rise of ground here is memorable as hav- ing been used by the English army when en- camped there. In running a new road north of this site many bones were found, and bak- ing ovens built of stone and brick were un- earthed, which have since been well-nigh de- stroyed vt the hands of vandal relic hunters. The State has taken measures to preserve this spot as a park, and the Society of Colonial Wars is about to erect a monument on this memorable ground. Fort Willia]vi Henry, located in the eastern- l^ 105 most portion of the grounds of the hotel of the same name. The earthworks remain intact an'I the form of the fortifications may distinctly Ik- traced. They are covered with a noble growth of pines which have sprung- up since the close of the last French war, in 1760. Fort George, situated on a rocky hill over- looking the railroad where it debouches on the beach at Lake George, is the site of the entrenched camp occupied by the main body of the garrison of Fort William Henry, during the siege, and of the massacre of Lake George. To-day the re- mains of Fort George, built by Amherst and after- wards occupied in the War of the Revolution by a detachment of Burgoyne's army, may be found on the spot. Ax Old Military Dock, from which both Abercromby's and Amherst's armies embarked on their expeditions against Ticonderoga, still exists under water on the beach at the head of Lake George. Near the same spot the remains of a sunken sloop may also be seen — a relic, no doubt, of one of the fleets of the various armies which traversed Lake George. Fort Gage, lying bet\yeen Luzerne and Xh*^ Plank Road, was an outpost of the encampment of Abercromby's army. Montcalm's Camp was located on the grounds of the old Caldwell Mansion House, now the property of Mr. Henry W. Hayden, and on those across the road known as the Golf Ground. The Temporary Camp occupied by the garrison 106 t)f Fort Wiliam Henry was located on the hig-h ground back of the Catholic Church. The Fort William Hexry Farm occupied the site of the present hotel, its grounds and those of the houses across the Plank Road. The grounds of some of these cottages are thickly filled with skeletons. In digging one cellar the remains of sixteen men were found, one of whom was an officer as was proved by the fact that his body had been enclosed in a plank coffin, in which were found an officer's epaulets. Artillery Cove is the spot where Montcalm landed his cannon for the siege of Fort William Henry, at night, under cover of the darkness. The Landixg of Montcalm's Army probably took place in the small bay north of the two points belonging to Mr. Cramer. From this point ]\[ontcalm's army marched in three columns to besiege Fort William Henry. Bolton was Montcalm's rendezveus for his forces on coming from the north to invest Fort AYilliam Henry, a triangle of fire being built on the mountain side here bj' the land forces, as a signal to those on the water. At this spot the whole army ate and rested. Diamond Island. Fortified by Burgoj'ne in the War of the Revolution for the protection of the stores which he brought through Lake George for the support of his army. Here a sharp battle was fought between Captain Aubrey, in command of the island, and Colonel Brown, in a fleet of boats captured from the English at the foot of 107 the lake and manned by Americans. A brass ot- tom north of this island. Dunham's Bay, in pre-g-lacial times the outlet of one of the two streams which flowed through the Valley of Lake Georg-e and took their ri.se in the Narrows. Here Brown destroyed his boats after his defeat at Diamond Island and made his escape by land. The remains of old boats may be seen in the water here, which, it has been con- jectured, were those of the plucky Brown. Sabbathday Poixt, so called for the reason that the army of Abercromby landed here Satur- day night and left during the small hours of Sundaj^ morning to advance against Ticonderoga. During the last French war and the Revolution several skirmishes were fought at this point. Roger's Rock. Behind this mountain the famous scout, Rogers, fought a gallant little bat- tle with an overpowering force of Indians and French, and according to tradition afterwards made the Indians believe by stratagem that he had slid down the rock and so escaped pursuit. From Rogers' Rock the advance guard of the French army at Ticonderoga kept a lookout at the time Abercromby moved through Lake George to the attack of that post. The Falls of Ticoxderoga. Here Lord Howe fell, on the west bank of the stream, near where Trout Brook enters it. Ticonderoga, occupied first by Dicskau in his advance against the English, was for some years 108 the advance jjost of the French and the site of the battle of Ticoudcroga. It %vas finallj^ aban- doned and partly destroyed by the French when Amherst laid siege to it. At the outset of the Eevolutionary Avar it was captured by Ethan Allen and later fell into the hands of General Burg-03^ne when he invaded New York State. Some interesting ruins still remain at this point and here a monument is likely soon to be erected hy the Society of Colonial Wars. % 3 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 10M-11-50'2^5i470 REMINGTON RAND I N C . 20 127 1897 Seelye - Lake George histo F 127 G3sii5 1897 v'A 11^ J) ^ .-^ m v>.i "V^^^ ,7' ■■ n