I have already referred to its seizure by the eccentric Ethan Allen, on the breaking out of the American war in 1775. This officer was a native of Vermont, who had been an infidel preacher, and was notorious as the editor of the first deistical publication that ever issued from the American press. The revolution was hardly begun, when the province of Connecticut gave him a commission to capture Ticonderoga. With about three hundred of his hardy “Green-mountain-boys,” he was hastening to the spot, when he fell in with Arnold, bearing a similar commission from Massachusetts. After some dispute as to the command, Allen was made leader, and Arnold his assistant. They arrived by night on the Vermont shore, opposite the fort. There they found a lad who had been accustomed to visit the fort every day with provisions and pedlar’s wares, and crossing by his directions, without noise, they were shown a secret and covered entrance into the fort itself. Climbing up through this passage, Allen led his men within the walls, and drew them up in the area of the fortress, having silenced and disarmed the only sentry who guarded the entrance. The commander of the post, who hardly knew there was war, was actually startled from his sleep, by Allen’s demand for its surrender. The drowsy officer inquired—“By what authority?” And was answered by Allen, half in banter and half in bombastic earnest,—“In the name of the Great Jehovah, and of the Continental Congress!” To one in his straits, with a sword at his naked breast, such a reply, however unintelligible, was sufficiently overpowering, and the post was surrendered without resistance. Its reduction in 1777, by Burgoyne, has been already described; but Ticonderoga is for ever endeared to Americans from the fact, that the flag of their independence was so early given to the breeze from its summit.
A guide, who called himself Enoch Gold, led me over the ruins. He pretended to have been with St Clair, and to have seen Burgoyne and his men on Mount Defiance. He showed us the way through which Allen gained his entrance, and took us down into the vaults and magazines. A subterranean apartment was shown as a kitchen, and the old fellow declared he had eaten bread hot out of its ovens. We gave the soi-disant veteran the liberal rewards of a hero; but I suspect we were paying him for his imagination, rather than for his hardships.
The shadows of the fortress were beginning to lengthen on the lake before we returned to our bark. The mountains of Vermont, which are mostly well wooded, looked brightly green in the broad sunshine, and tempted us to wish we had time for an excursion to their heights. It was afterwards my happiness to go into Vermont, on a visit to Lake Dunmore, which lies among its mountains, and supplies delicious fish. I found it a truly Arcadian region, abounding with streams and pasturages, and rich in flocks and herds. It breeds a rugged race of men, with some characteristics decidedly Swiss. It is said, indeed, that a Switzer, who had come to settle in America, preferred these diminutive Alps, with their lakes and mountaineer population, to any other part of the country; and, fixing his dwelling accordingly, soon ceased to be home-sick, and sigh at the ranz des vaches.
Crown Point, the twin sister of Ticonderoga, is only ten miles beyond; but we did not reach it as soon as we had expected, for the wind had changed, and we were obliged to tack. Every now and then, the man at the helm, which was our gallant captain himself, would cry out,—“Heads!” and the boom would come sweeping across the deck, with woe to the head that wore a hat, or did not bow soon enough to save it. Several times I expected to see our friend Freke carried overboard bodily, and engulfed like another Corlaer; for so profoundly was he engaged with his cigar, as he sat, or rather squatted, on the hatches, that the captain’s monotonous warning failed to alarm him till the whole company had echoed “Heads!” and, with other demonstrations of affectionate solicitude, forced him to fall on all-fours.
At Crown Point the lake greatly improves. The water appears much clearer, and the width of the lake is nearly if not quite fourfolded. It continues to expand till it becomes ten or twelve miles in breadth, and islands begin to be numerous. To the northward the higher peaks of the Green Mountains stretch away with magnificent outlines; and on the west, a bleak and craggy range of hills, which are said to harbour even yet the wolf and the bear, approach, and then recede from the shore. Here, as early as 1731, the French built Fort Frederick, as the first move towards the seizure and claim of the whole surrounding territory; and from this point they made their bloody and atrocious incursions into New England, and towards the Mohawk, or dismissed their hireling savages to do it for them. The recesses of Fort Frederick are believed to have rivalled the dungeons of the Inquisition in scenes of misery and crime. In its gloomy cells were plotted the inhuman massacres which drenched the American settlements in blood. There, it is said, the Indian butchers received their commissions to burn, tomahawk, and scalp; and there, in the presence of Jesuit fathers, or at least with their connivance, was the gleaming gold counted down to the savages in return for their infernal trophies of success; the silvery locks of the aged colonist, the clotted tresses of women, and the crimsoned ringlets of the child. In 1759 this detestable hold of grasping and remorseless tyranny was blown up, and abandoned by the French to General Amherst. Soon after, the British Government began to erect a fortification in the vicinity of the ruins, and a noble work it was; though it proved of no use at all, after the enormous sum of two millions sterling had been expended on its walls of granite, and ditches blasted in the solid rock. The exploits of Arnold and Sir Guy Carleton in this vicinity have been already described. Since the close of the war of the Revolution, the costly works at Crown Point have been suffered to fall into decay; and they are now piles of ruin, covered with weeds, among which the red berries of the sumach are conspicuously beautiful in their time.
Though “Captain Pusher” made a landing at this point to procure a little milk for our tea, we did not go ashore, and were soon on our way once more with a freer prospect, and perhaps with somewhat expanded spirits. The setting sun, in the clear climate of America, is in fair weather almost always beautiful; and my recollections of the rosy and purple tints with which it adorned the feathery flakes of cloud that floated around the peaks of the Green Mountains, are to this day almost as bright in memory as when they first made my heart leap up to behold them in the soft summer sky of Vermont. As the lake grew wider and the darkness deeper, there was of course less and less to be seen; and the noble scenery at Burlington, where the width of the lake is greatest, and the shores assume a bolder and higher character of beauty, was to our great regret unavoidably passed in the night. Still, there is something in starlight upon the waters, in new and romantic regions, which peculiarly inspires me. The same constellations which one has long been accustomed to view in familiar scenes and associations, come out like old friends in the heavens of strange and untried lands; shining witnesses to the brotherhood of differing nations, and to the impartial benevolence and unsleeping love of God. But I have no reason to regret that the only night I ever passed on Lake Champlain was mostly spent in watching; for long before I was tired of gazing at Orion and the Pleiads, I was rewarded by the sight of one of the most splendid auroras that I ever beheld. In a moment, the whole northern heaven was illuminated with columnar light; and the zenith seemed to rain it down, so to speak—while the surface of the lake reflecting it, gave us, to our own eyes, the appearance of sailing in some bright fluid, midway between a vault and an abyss of fire. This display of glory continued to flash and quiver above us for several hours. There were, in quick succession, sheets and spires and pencils of variegated light, rolling and tremulous, wavy and flame-like, blazoning heaven’s azure with something like heraldic broidery and colours. Towards morning, the intense cold and heavy mountain dews drove me for a season to my berth; but I was on deck again in time to see the moon make her heliacal rising over the eastern peaks, in the wan paleness of her last quarter. The approach of day was attended with a fog; but it soon thinned off, and we made Plattsburgh in good time. Here we parted with our vessel, and her worthy commander; and though we neither gave him a piece of plate nor voted him an accomplished gentleman, we left him with such wishes as, if they have been fulfilled, have long since removed him from the helm of his sloop, and the waters of Lake Champlain, to a snug little cot at Burlington, and the company of any number of rosy little Green-Mountain boys and their interesting mother.
Plattsburgh is situated on the western bank of the lake, just where the crescent shore of a bold peninsula begins to curve round a broad semicircular bay, several miles in circumference, and of liberal depth. Here the American squadron, under Commodore Macdonough, was anchored on the 11th of September 1814, in order to assist the land forces under General Macomb, in repelling an expected attack from the British troops under Sir George Prevost. The English flotilla had been ordered up from the Isle-aux-Noix to engage Macdonough, and divert his fire from the shore; and accordingly, at about eight o’clock in the morning, was seen off the peninsula of Cumberland Head, and hailed by both armies with vociferous acclamations. The cannonade instantly began from the ships and on the land, and for two hours and twenty minutes the naval engagement was continued with the most stubborn resolution on both sides. Though the battle on shore was sorely contested, the action between the squadrons was anxiously watched by both armies, and by thousands of deeply interested spectators, who surveyed the field and the fleets from the neighbouring heights. Macdonough’s flag-ship, the Saratoga, was twice on fire; and though Downie had fallen in the first moment of the conflict, the Confiance had succeeded in dismantling all the starboard guns of her antagonist, when the bower-cable of the Saratoga was cut, and a stern-anchor dropped, on which she rounded to, and presented a fresh broadside. The Confiance was unable to imitate this manœuvre, and she was obliged to strike, the remainder of the flotilla soon following her example. A few of the British galleys escaped, but as there was not another mast standing in either fleet, they could neither be followed by friends or by foes. The decision of the contest was vociferously cheered from the shore; and Sir George, perceiving the fate of his fleet, commenced a retreat, having suffered the loss of nearly a thousand men. This brilliant action in Cumberland Bay has made the name of Macdonough the pride and glory of Lake Champlain; and deservedly so, for his professional merit appears to have been no greater than his private worth. The brave but unfortunate Downie, who, with a squadron wanting a full third of being as strong as that of his antagonist, maintained this gallant contest, sleeps in a quiet grave at Plattsburgh, under a simple monument erected by the affection of a sister. He is always mentioned with respectful regret; but Macdonough is, of course, the hero of every panegyric. An anecdote which we heard at Whitehall gives me a higher opinion of the latter, however, than all that has been justly said of his merits as an officer. A few minutes before the action commenced, he caused his chaplain to offer the appropriate prayers in the presence of all his fleet—the men standing reverently uncovered, and the commander himself kneeling upon the deck. An officer of the Confiance is said to have observed this becoming, but somewhat extraordinary, devotion through his glass, and to have reported it to Captain Downie, who seemed to be immediately struck with a foreboding of the result. The sailors on our little sloop told us another story of the action with great expressions of delight. It seems the hen-coop of the Saratoga was struck in the beginning of the action, and a cock becoming released flew into the rigging, and, flapping his wings, crowed lustily through the fire and smoke. The gunners gave chanticleer a hearty cheer, and taking the incident as an omen of victory, stood to their guns with fresh spirit and enthusiasm. Smaller things than this have turned the tide of battles far greater, and more important to nations and the world.
We spent a day at Plattsburgh surveying the field and the fort, and picking up stories of the fight. Relics of the battle were every where visible; and grape-shot and cannon-balls were lying here and there in the ditches. The evening was fair, and we drove out to an Indian encampment on the peninsula, the first thing of the kind I ever beheld. Entering one of the wigwams, or huts, I found the squaws engaged in weaving small baskets of delicate withes of elm, dyed and stained with brilliant vegetable-colours. An infant strapped to a flat board, and set like a cane or umbrella against the stakes of the hut, was looking on with truly Indian stoicism. The mother said her child never cried; but whether it runs in the blood, or is the effect of discipline, is more than I could learn. On the beach were canoes of bark, which had been newly constructed by the men. A squaw, who desired us to purchase, lifted one of them with her hand; yet it could have carried six or seven men with safety on the lake. We observed that males and females alike wore crucifixes, and were evidently Christians, however degraded and ignorant. They spoke French, so as to be easily understood, and some English. These poor and feeble creatures were the last of the Iroquois.
Next day, in post-coaches, we came into Canada. At St John’s, where we dined, Freke boisterously drank to his Majesty. So deep were the loyal feelings of our friend, however, that he continued his bumpers to “all the royal family,” which, though not quite so great an achievement then as it would be now, was quite sufficient to consign him to the attentions of our host, where we left him without an adieu. We were much amused by the novelties of our road, so decidedly Frenchified, and unlike any thing in the States. Women, in the costume of French peasants, were at work in the fields; and we saw one engaged in bricklaying at the bottom of a ditch or cellar. The men in caps, smock-frocks, and almost always with pipes in their mouths, drove by in light charettes, or waggons with rails at the sides, drawn by stout little ponies of a plump yet delicate build, and for cart-horses remarkably fleet. For the first time in my life I observed also dogs harnessed in the Esquimaux manner, and drawing miniature charettes, laden with bark or faggots. Every thing reminded us that we were not in England or America, but only in Acadie.
We were jaunting merrily along, when vociferous halloos behind us caused our whip to pull up with a jerk. A Yorkshire man, in terror of footpads, began to bellow Drive on! and our heads were thrust forth in farcical preparation for a stand-and-deliver assault, when a waggon was discovered approaching us, in which were two men, one without a hat, his hair streaming like a meteor, and both bawling Stop, stop! like the post-boy at the heels of John Gilpin. In a moment we recognised Freke. With any thing but a volley of compliments, he assailed the driver for carrying off his luggage, which sure enough was found in the boot, with his splendid initials inscribed in a constellation of brass nails. His hat had been blown off in the pursuit; but after adorning himself with a turban, he was again admitted to our company, though not without some reluctance expressed or understood. The fumes of his dinner had not entirely subsided; and I am sorry to say, that his enthusiasm for his king and country was about in inverse proportion to the honour he did them by his extraordinary appearance. I wish it had exhausted itself in song and sentiment; but it was evident that a strong desire to fight the whole universe was fast superseding the exhilaration of reunion with his friends. Unfortunately a poor Canadian, in passing with his charette, struck the wheels of our coach; and though he alone was the sufferer, being knocked into a ditch instantaneously, Freke was upon him in a second, inflicting such a drubbing as reminded me forcibly of a similar incident in Horace’s route to Brundusium. It was with difficulty that we succeeded in reducing our hero to a sense of propriety, and compelling him to console the astounded provincial with damages. The sufferer, who thanked him in French for the not over generous remuneration, seemed altogether at a loss to know for what he had been beaten; and I am happy to say that the politeness of the peasant seemed to restore our military friend to consciousness, and a fear that he had behaved like a brute. At the next stage he provided himself with a Canadian cap, and on resuming his seat overwhelmed us with apologies; so that we were compelled to forgive the aberration, which was doubtless, as he said, attributable solely to his loyal concern for the health of his Majesty, and to an overflow of spirits at finding himself once more in the pale of the British empire.