After regimental dress parade the visitors were returned to the depot by automobile and left for Montreal on the regular 6 o’clock train, expressing themselves enthusiastically in appreciation of the festivities arranged in their honor in this country.
One of the French delegation, M. Gaston Deschamps, on May 3, 1912, reported to Le Temps, published in Paris, the exercises at Crown Point and Plattsburgh, which is a graphic description of the impressions made upon the visitors on that occasion. From that report we excerpt the following, giving the English instead of the French original:
People have come from all the cities and towns about Port Henry; from all the villages and hamlets near the Canadian frontier, to greet the French delegation. A band of musicians advances and plays the “Marseillaise”—a Marseillaise slow, sweet, as though languishing from the affectionate and cajoling tenderness of our friends in the United States and New France. Our Marseillaise lends itself admirably to that metamorphosis, and the warlike march of the Army of the Rhine easily becomes, when one beats adagio maestoso time, a hymn of solemn measure and touchingly religious.
Hon. Walter C. Witherbee, one of the most distinguished citizens of Port Henry, is the President of the Inauguration Committee of the Champlain Monument at Crown Point. For several years he has devoted the best part of his time and his efforts to the work of the American and French commemorations of which we to-day see the happy outcome. He has applied himself with all his heart to this intellectual and moral enterprise, and he has brought to the service of his tenacious idealism all the practical judgment of an excellent business man. I have learned—not from him, for Mr. Witherbee is modesty itself—all that he has done for the celebration of the third centenary of Champlain. Treasurer of the New York Commission, he is the one especially who, with Senator Henry W. Hill and Mr. John R. Myers, put through the necessary measures before the Government at Washington, to the end that the commemorative festivities might be exceptionally brilliant.
Mr. Clinton Scollard has sung the glory of Champlain:
A valiant son of that intrepid line
Which gave fair lustre to the fame of France.
Another poet, Mr. Percy MacKaye, has celebrated in his “Ballad of Ticonderoga” the heroic defenders of Fort Carillon. Dr. Daniel L. Cady has dedicated a whole bouquet of lyric verses to the picturesque beauties of Lake Champlain and to the bravery of the good sailor of Saintonge:
The Brouage sailor * * *