Men laboured on the meagre defences of the county as though weighted by a nightmare—as though drowsing awake and not believing in their ghostly dream.
And all preparation went slow—fearfully slow—and it was like dragging a mass of chained men, whose minds had been drugged, to drive the militia to the drill ground or force the labourers to the unfinished parapets of our few and scattered forts.
Men still talked of the Sacandaga Block House as though there were such a refuge; but there was none unless they meant the ruins at Fish House or the unburned sheep-fold at Summer House Point, or the Mayfield defenses.
There remained only one fort of consequence south of the Lakes—Fort Stanwix, now called Schuyler, and that was far from finished, far from properly armed, garrisoned, and provisioned.
Whatever else of defense Tryon County possessed were merest makeshifts—stone farmhouses fortified by ditch, stockade, and bastions; block-houses of wood; nothing more.
Fragments of our two regular regiments were ever shifting garrison—a company here, a battalion there. A few rangers kept the field; a regiment of Herkimer's militia, from time to time, took its turn at duty; a scout or two of irregulars and Oneida Indians haunted the trail toward Buck Island—which some call Deer Island, and others speak of as Carleton Island, and others still name it Ile-aux-Chevreuil, which is a mistake.
But any name for the damned spot was good enough for me, who had been there in years past, and knew how strong it could be made to defy us and to send out armed hordes to harass us on the Mohawk.
And at that instant, under Colonel Barry St. Leger, the Western flying force of the enemy was being marshalled at Buck Island.
Our scouts brought an account of the forces already there—detachments of the 8th British regulars, the 34th regulars, the regiment of Sir John, called the Royal New Yorkers by some, by others the Greens—(though our scouts told us that their new uniforms were to be scarlet)—the Corps of Chasseurs, a regiment of green-coats known as Butler's Rangers, a detachment of Royal Artillery, another of Highlanders, and, most sinister of all, Brant's Iroquois under Thayendanegea himself and a number of young officers of the Indian Department, with Colonel Claus to advise them.
This was the flying force that threatened us from the West, directed by Burgoyne.