"August 28, Monday: Certified that Cape Breton was taken, and 63 cannon shot at Fort Edward and small arms. In joy we made a great fire, and every soldier had a jill of Rum at the Half Way Brook; and it was a very rainy night.
"August 29, Tuesday: 140 of us went and made a breastwork; and we had a jill of rum; and we had a remarkable drink of flip this evening; a very cold night.
"Sept. 5, Tuesday: I on guard; and we earned half a jill of rum by making great many bonfires."
This diary tells of one more attack, which seems to have escaped the notice of other historians, and is therefore inserted at this point. Under date of Sept. 9th, it says:
"Saturday: the picquet guard went to meet the teams; a Sargeant and four men went forward to tell Half Way Brook guard that the picquet was coming; and the Indians shot the Sergeant and scalped him before one man got to him; and then the Indians ran away." [FN]
[FN] In passing we may say that Lieut. Thompson returned home safely, served at Concord and Lexington, and, his biographer says, finally "became one of the most useful men in the Town of Woburn." To him is attributed the discovery of the "Baldwin Apple," and a monument commemorating this gift to mankind, has been erected to his memory, making applicable in peculiar fashion Milton's lines, "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war."
With the close of the Abercrombie Campaign, and the abandonment of headquarters at Lake George, Fort Edward became once more the northern outpost of Colonial civilization. [FN]
[FN] General Abercrombie, according to documents in William L. Stone's possession, also spelled his name "Abercromby." Montresor spells it with a "y," but leading American historians use the termination "ie."