Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier

by Frank H. Severance

Now the spring before, when we had all followed the Marquis de Denonville across Lake Ontario to harass the cantons of the Iroquois, this establishment of a post on the Niagara was assuredly a part of that gentleman's plan. It is not for me, who am but a mere lieutenant of marines, to show how a great commander should conduct his expeditions; yet I do declare that while there was no lack of provision made for killing such of the savages as would permit it, there was next to none for maintaining troops who were to be left penned up in the savages' country. We who were left at Fort Denonville had but few mattocks or even axes. Of ammunition there was none too much. In the Senecas' country we had destroyed thousands of minots[6] of corn, but had brought along scarce a week's rations of it to this corner. We had none of us gone a-soldiering with our pockets full of seed, and even if we had brought ample store of corn and pumpkin seed, of lentils and salad plants, the season was too late to have done much in gardening. We made some feeble attempts at it; but no rain fell, the earth baked under the sun so hard that great cracks came in it; and what few shoots of corn and pumpkin thrust upward through this parched soil, withered away before any strengthening juices came in them. To hunt far from the fort we durst not, save in considerable parties; so that if we made ourselves safe from the savages, we also made every other living thing safe against us. To fish was well nigh our only recourse; but although many of our men labored diligently at it, they met with but indifferent return.

Thus it was that our most ardent hopes, our very life itself, hung upon the coming of the promised supplies. There was joy at the fort when at length the sail of the little bark was seen; even De Troyes, who had grown exceeding grave and melancholy, took on again something of his wonted spirit. But we were not quite yet to be succored, for it was the season of the most light and trifling airs, so that the bark for two days hung idly on the shining lake, some leagues away from the mouth of the river, while we idled and fretted like children, impatient for her coming. When once we had her within the bar, there was no time lost in unlading. It was a poor soldier indeed who could not work to secure the comfort of his own belly; and the store was so ample that we felt secure for the winter, come what might. The bark that fetched these things had been so delayed by the calms, that she weighed and sailed with the first favoring breeze; and it was not until her sail had fall'n below the horizon that we fairly had sight or smell of what she had brought.

From the first the stores proved bad; still, we made shift to use the best, eked out with what the near-by forest and river afforded. For many weeks we saw no foes. There was little work to do, and the men idled through the days, with no word on their lips but to complain of the food and wish for spring. When the frosts began to fall we had a more vigorous spell of it; but now for the first time appeared the Iroquois wasps. One of our parties, which had gone toward the great fall of the Niagara, lost two men; those who returned reported that their comrades were taken all unawares by the savages. Another party, seeking game to the eastward where a stream cuts through the high bank on its way to the lake,[7] never came back at all. Here we found their bodies and buried them; but their scalps, after the manner of these people, had been taken.

Christmas drew on, but never was a sorrier season kept by soldiers of France. De Troyes had fallen ill. Naught ailed him that we could see save low spirits and a thinning of the blood, which made him too weak to walk. The Father Jean de Lamberville, who had stayed with us, and who would have been our hope and consolation in those days, very early fell desperate ill of a distemper, so that the men had not the help of his ministrations and holy example. Others there were who either from feebleness or lack of discipline openly refused their daily duty and went unpunished. We had fair store of brandy; and on Christmas eve those of us who still held some soul for sport essayed to lighten the hour. We brewed a comfortable draught, built the blaze high, for the frosts were getting exceeding sharp, gathered as many as could be had of officers and worthy men into our cabin, and made brave to sing the songs of France. And now here was a strange thing: that while the hardiest and soundest amongst us had made good show of cheer, had eaten the vile food and tried to speak lightly of our ills, no sooner did we hear our own voices in the songs that carried us back to the pleasantries of our native land, than we fell a-sobbing and weeping like children; which weakness I attribute to the distemper that was already in our blood.

For the days that followed I have no heart to set down much. We never went without the palisades except well guarded to fetch firewood. This duty indeed made the burden of every day. A prodigious store of wood was needed, for the cold surpassed anything I had ever known. The snow fell heavily, and there were storms when for days the gale drave straight across our bleak plateau. There was no blood in us to withstand the icy blasts. Do what we would the chill of the tomb was in the cabins where the men lay. The wood-choppers one day, facing such a storm, fell in the deep drifts just outside the gate. None durst go out to them. The second day the wolves found them—and we saw it all!

There was not a charge of powder left in the fort. There was not a mouthful of fit food. The biscuits had from the first been full of worms and weevils. The salted meat, either from the admixture of sea-water through leaky casks, or from other cause, was rotten beyond the power even of a starving man to hold.

Le scorbut broke out. I had seen it on shipboard, and knew the signs. De Troyes now seldom left his cabin; and when, in the way of duty, I made my devoirs, and he asked after the men, I made shift to hide the truth. But it could not be for long.

"My poor fellows," he sighed one day, as he turned feebly on his couch of planks, "it must be with all as it is with me—see, look here, De Tregay, do you know the sign?" and he bared his shrunken arm and side.

Indeed I knew the signs—the dry, pallid skin, with the purple blotches and indurations. He saw I was at a loss for words.

"Sang de Dieu!" he cried, "Is this what soldiers of France must come to, for the glory of"——. He stopped short, as if lacking spirit to go on. "Now I bethink me," he added, in a melancholy voice, "it is what soldiers must come to." Then, after a while he asked: