ber now covers it, except where the parades were. The trees are chiefly maple, some of them twenty inches in diameter. There are about two hundred of them on the mount, large enough for the extraction of sap for sugar. The young shoots never sprang up where the old parades were, and they present bald spots, bearing only stinted vegetation.
During the summer and autumn of 1776 the Americans were diligent in fortifying this spot. They erected a picketed fort and several batteries, dug many wells, and constructed nearly three hundred houses for the use of the soldiers. The remains of these are scattered in all directions upon the mount; and the foundation walls of the hospital, just commenced when the evacuation in 1777 took place, are now nearly as perfect as when first laid. Narrow ditches, indicating the line of pickets on the north part of the mount, and running in various directions and at every angle, are distinctly seen; and the remains of the "horseshoe battery," on the extreme north end, are very prominent. Near this battery is a flint quarry, which seems to have been well known and used by the Indians, for arrow-heads in every stage of manufacture, from the almost unshapen flint to the perfect weapon, are found there, I was told, in abundance. Toward the close of 1776 a fatal epidemic prevailed in the garrison there, called the "camp distemper," and the graves of the victims are thickly strewn among the trees.
At one time the deaths were so numerous that it was found impossible to dig a grave for each, and the spot was shown to me where fourteen bodies were deposited in a single broad grave, about daylight one morning. Among the hundreds of these mounds of the dead, scattered over the mount, there was only one individualized by an inscribed stone. The rude monument is a rough limestone, and the inscription, "M. Richardson Stoddard," appeared as if carved with the point of a bayonet. The tenant was probably an officer of militia from a town formerly named Stoddard, in Vermont. Already some Vandal visitor had broken off a "relic" from its diminutive bulk, and ere this some patriotic antiquary has doubtless slipped the whole stone into his pocket, and secured a legacy of rare value for his wondering children! A propensity to appropriate to private use a fragment of public monuments, and a pitiful ambition, allied in kind to that of the Ephesian incendiary, to associate one's name by pencil or penknife inscription with places of public resort, have already greatly marred and disfigured a large proportion of our few monuments, and can not be too severely condemned. Charity, that "covereth the multitude of sins," has not a mantle broad enough to hide this iniquity, for none but heartless knaves or brainless fools would thus deface even the meanest grave-stone in a church-yard. Wolfe's monument on the Plains of Abraham, and the monuments at Red Bank and Paoli, bear mournful testimony of this barbarism which is abroad.
At various times Mount Independence, as well as Crown Point and other localities in the neighborhood of Lake Champlain, has been scarred by money-diggers. In 1815 a company came hither from Northern Vermont, to search for military treasures which wise seers and the divining rod declared were buried there. The chief of the party, entertaining misgivings on his arrival as to the success of money-digging, purchased land in the neighborhood, and while his more credulous companions were digging deep into the mount, he was plowing deep into his land. He raised grain and esculent roots—they raised gravel and worthless clay. When their patience and money were exhausted, they shouldered their picks and departed for Western New York. He remained, became a thrifty farmer, and, by the unerring divining rod of industry, found the treasure. Credulous people still dig at these localities, and several pits were pointed out to me which had been recently excavated. *
* Three or four years ago the white wife of a negro dreamed three times—the cabalistic number—that at a certain place on Mount Independence immense treasures were buried when the Americans evacuated that post. They were, doubtless, the identical silver balls which calumny asserted Burgoyne fired into St. Clair's camp as the price of treason. The negro procured aid, and a pure white dog to watch them while digging. A moonlight night was the chosen time. The secret leaked into the ears of some boys, and set their mischievous wits at work. A large pumpkin was emptied of its seeds, and staring eyes, wide nostrils and grinning teeth were cut out of the rind, and a lighted candle was placed within the sphere. This hideous head, with its fiery eyes and nostrils, was placed on the caput of a bold boy, who marched up to the pit where the money-diggers were at work. The dog first discovered the grinning specter, and with a loud yell, leaped from the cavity and ran for life. The men followed, leaving pick, spade, hat, and coat behind, quite sure that the "gentleman in black" was close upon their heels -, and they have ever since believed that he guards the treasures, and sometimes takes an evening stroll on Mount Independence.
Return to Sholes's.—Darkness on the Lake.—View from Sholes's Landing.
Darkness came on, and the rain pattered upon the leaves before we descended to the shore; and by the time we were fairly out upon the lake our destined haven was invisible.