The attack on the Island continued with interruption 2 Hours.”[37]
Thus ended the fight of Diamond Island; a fight which, if attended with better success, might have perhaps hastened the surrender of Burgoyne, and resulted in other advantages to the American arms. As it was, however, the British line of communication on Lake George was not broken, while the American leaders took good care to prevent this failure from reaching the public ear through the press. Thus Colonel Brown’s reports to General Lincoln remained unpublished. They have now been brought out to be put on permanent record, as interesting material for American history.
To-day the summer tourist who rows out to this lovely isle, which commands delightful views of the lake far and wide, will see no evidences of the struggle, but will find the very atmosphere bathed in perfect peace. Of relics of the old wars, which for more than a hundred years caused the air to jar, and echoing hills to complain,—there are none. The ramparts that once bristled with cannon have been smoothed away, and the cellar of an ancient house is all the visitor will find among the birches to tell of the olden occupancy of man.
(The Late Rev.) B. F. DaCosta.
New York City.
Lieutenant Colonel John Brown (1774-1780), a native of Berkshire county, Massachusetts, was a Yale graduate of 1771, and in 1774 visited Canada as a horse dealer, to ascertain the sentiments of the Canadians towards the principles of our impending Revolution. His subsequent experiences with Arnold in the Quebec campaign are matters of history, but his early death, in the encounter at Stone Arabia, N. Y., in 1780, just after the discovery of Arnold’s treachery, prevented the details of his specific accusations against the latter from becoming public. His descendants in Boston have long been preparing to issue a detailed biography, which should be a valuable contribution to the literature of the Revolution. The story of his Lake George fight was practically unknown before Dr. DeCosta’s article was written [for the N. E. Historic Genealogic Society] and although it was afterward published in pamphlet form, so few copies were printed that it has been inaccessible to the general reader.
Mr. William L. Stone furnishes me with the following particulars regarding Captain Aubrey: He came with his regiment from Ireland to America in 1773, and served throughout the Revolution. He commanded his company at Bunker Hill, and when in the spring of 1776 the regiment was sent to reinforce Carleton in Canada, he accompanied it and aided in the expulsion of the American forces. After Burgoyne’s surrender, Aubrey’s detachment returned to Canada and he remained there and in command of the post at the entrance to Lake Ontario for a long time. He died in London, January 15, 1814.—[Ed.]
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Silliman, who was here in 1819, says: “The crystals are hardly surpassed by any in the world for transparency and perfection of form. They are, as usual, the six-sided prism, and are frequently terminated at both ends by six-sided pyramids. These last, of course, must be found loose, or, at least, not adhering to any rock; those which are broken off have necessarily only one pyramid.”—Silliman’s Travels, p. 153.
[29] This affair was alluded to by the English, though the Americans said nothing. Among recent writers, I have found no notice beyond that by Lossing in his Field Book, vol. i., p. 114. When the present writer composed his work on Lake George he had not found the official account by Col. Brown.