*** Dr. Belknap.
**** The defile through which the English retreated, and in which so many were slaughtered, is called the Bloody Defile. It is a deep gorge between the road from Glenn's Falls to Lake George and the high range of hills northward, called the French Mountain. In excavations for the plank road near the defile a large number of skeletons were exhumed. I saw the skull of one, which was of an enormous size, at least one third larger than any other human head I ever saw. The occipital portion exhibited a long fracture, evidently made by a tomahawk.
Destruction of Fort William Henry.—Brilliant Expedition under Abercrombie.—Visit to the Ruins of Fort George
Dead bodies, mangled with scalping-knives and tomahawks in all the wantonness of Indian fierceness and barbarity, were every where to be seen. More than one hundred women, butchered and shockingly mangled, lay upon the ground, still weltering in their gore. Devastation, barbarity, and horror every where appeared, and the spectacle presented was too diabolical and awful either to be endured or described."
Fort William Henry was never rebuilt. Upon an eminence about a mile southeast of it, and half a mile from the lake, Fort George was erected, but it was never a scene of very stirring events. A little south of Fort George was a small fortification called Fort Gage, so named in honor of General Gage, who served under Lord Amherst, and succeeded him in the command of the forces in America in 1760, and was Governor of Massachusetts when the Revolution broke out. Hardly a vestige of this fort can now be seen.
The English, under General Abercrombie and the young Lord Howe, quartered at Fort George in 1758, preparatory to an attack upon the French posts upon Lake Champlain. Seven thousand regulars and nine thousand provincial troops were there assembled, with a one train of artillery and all necessary military stores, the largest and best-appointed army yet seen in America. On the 5th of July they embarked on Lake George, on board nine hundred bateaux and one hundred and thirty-five whale-boats, and the next day landed at the foot of the lake and pushed on toward Ticonderoga. Of the events which befell them there I shall hereafter write. Let us glance a moment at the present.