Under the British the old French fort was dismantled and allowed to fall into decay. So well did the situation of Crown Point appeal to the British, however, as a place of fortification and so important was a hold upon Lake Champlain deemed, that the British began the construction of a massive fortress, on the most approved model, which was completed as far as it was ever carried within the course of a few years after Amherst’s occupation of the point and which cost ten millions of dollars. This is an outlay which would be large even to-day. The jagged ruins of the walls of this fort, which never fired a shot in anger, are what one sees now on Crown Point when paying the old place a visit.
When Ethan Allen took Ticonderoga with his Green Mountain boys, Crown Point also fell to the Americans without resistance. It came passively into English hands again and after the Revolution was allowed to fall into decay.
Not far from the remains of Crown Point fort is the beautiful and large monument to Samuel Champlain, known as the Champlain Memorial. It takes the form of a light-house and is most solidly and durably constructed. Erected through the joint subscription of the States of Vermont and New York, the monument is, as well, a tribute to public spirit. In character the light-house is memorial of the past rather than symbolic of the future; a heroic statue in bronze of Champlain faces the east and at the base of the statue is Rodin’s “La France,” presented to the States of New York and Vermont for this undertaking by France.
[THE HEIGHTS OF QUEBEC]
(THE CITADEL, CASTLE ST. LOUIS)
CANADA
That hardy mariner, Jacques Cartier, sailed up the St. Lawrence River in 1535, but it was not until 1608, when Champlain’s vessel brought the first permanent colonists of New France, that Quebec was founded. The storm-tossed little caravel entered the St. Lawrence in the early summer of that year. Champlain landed his miscellaneous following, built “L’Habitation,” as he named the first official residence in Quebec, and laid the foundations of a small fort, an act portentous of the stirring events which the future held calmly waiting their turn and which were to give Quebec so conspicuous a place in the military annals of the New World.