THE DISCOVERY OF LAKE GEORGE BY FATHER JOGUES. -- A
PEDESTRIAN JOURNEY. -- THE HERMIT OF THE NARROWS. --
CONVENT OF ST. MARY'S OF THE LAKE. -- THE PAULIST
FATHERS. -- CANAL-ROUTE FROM LAKE CHAMPLAIN TO
ALBANY. -- BODFISH RETURNS TO NEW JERSEY. -- THE LITTLE
FLEET IN ITS HAVEN OF REST.
In the last chapter I gave, from seemingly
good authority, the appellation of the narrow
terminal water of the southern end of Lake
Champlain, "the tail of the lake." Another
authority, in describing Lake George, says:
"The Indians named the lake, on account of the
purity of its waters, Horicon, or 'silvery water;'
they also called it Canderi-oit, or 'the tail of
the lake,' on account of its connecting with Lake
Champlain." Cooper, in his "Last of the
Mohicans," says: "It occurred to me that the
French name of the lake was too complicated,
the American too commonplace, and the Indian
too unpronounceable for either to be used
familiarly in a work of fiction." So he called it
Horicon.
History furnishes us with the following facts
in regard to the discovery of the lake. While
journeying up the St. Lawrence in a fleet of
twelve canoes, on a mission to the friendly
Huron aborigines, Father Isaac Jogues and his two
friends, donnes of the mission, Rene Goupil and
Guillaume Couture, with another Frenchman,
were captured at the western end of Lake of
St. Peter by a band of Iroquois, which was on a
marauding expedition from the Mohawk River
country, near what is now the city of Troy. In
the panic caused by the sudden onslaught of the
Iroquois, the unconverted portion of the thirty-six
Huron allies of the Frenchmen fled into the
woods, while the christianized portion defended
the white men for a while. A reinforcement of
the enemy soon scattered these also, but not
until the Frenchmen and a few of the Hurons
were made captive. This was on the 2d of
August, 1642.
According to Francis Parkman, the author of
"The Jesuits in North America," the savages
tortured Jogues and his white companions,
striping off their clothing, tearing out their
fingernails with their teeth, and gnawing their fingers
with the fury of beasts. The seventy Iroquois
returned southward, following the River
Richelieu, Lake Champlain, and Lake George, en
route for the Mohawk towns. Meeting a war
party of two hundred of their own nation on
one of the islands of Champlain, the Indians
formed two parallel lines between which the
captives were forced to run for their lives, while
the savages struck at them with thorny sticks
and clubs. Father Jogues fell exhausted to the
ground, bathed in his own blood, when fire was
applied to his body. At night the young
warriors tormented the poor captives by opening
their wounds and tearing out their hair and
beards. The day following this night of torture
the Indians and their mangled captives reached
the promontory of Ticonderoga, along the base
of which flowed the limpid waters, the outlet of
Lake George. Here the party made a portage
through the primeval forests, carrying their
canoes and cargoes on their backs, when suddenly
there broke upon their view the dark blue waters
of a beautiful lake, which Mr. Parkman thus
eloquently describes:
"Like a fair naiad of the wilderness it
slumbered between the guardian mountains that
breathe from crag and forest the stern poetry of
war. But all then was solitude; and the clang
of trumpets, the roar of cannon, and the deadly
crack of the rifle had never as yet awakened
their angry echoes. Again the canoes were
launched and the wild flotilla glided on its way,
now in the shadow of the heights, now on the
broad expanse, now among the devious
channels of the Narrows, beset with woody islets
where the hot air was redolent of the pine, the
spruce, and the cedar,-- till they neared that
tragic shore where, in the following century,
New England rustics battled the soldiers of
Dieskau, where Montcalm planted his batteries,
where the red cross waved so long amid the
smoke, and where, at length, the summer night
was hideous with carnage, and an honored name
was stained with a memory of blood. The
Indians landed at or near the future site of Fort
William Henry, left their canoes, and with their
prisoners began their march for the nearest
Mohawk town."
Father Jogues lived among his captors until
the fall of 1643, when he escaped in a vessel
from the Dutch settlement of Rensselaerswyck
(Albany), to which place the Iroquois had gone
to trade with the inhabitants. He arrived at the
Jesuit college of Rennes, France, in a most
destitute condition, on the 5th of January, 1644,
where he was joyfully received and kindly cared
for. When he appeared before Queen Anne of
Austria, the woman who wore a diadem thought
it a privilege to kiss his mutilated hands. -- In the
Roman Catholic church a deformed or mutilated
priest cannot say mass; he must be a perfect
man in body and mind before the Lord. Father
Jogues wished to return to his old missionary
field; so, to restore to him his lost right of saying
mass, the Pope granted his prayer by a special
dispensation. In the spring of 1643 he returned
to the St. Lawrence country to found a new
mission, to be called the Mission of Martyrs. His
Superior at Montreal ordered him to proceed to
the country of the Mohawks, and in company
with Sieur Bourdon, a government engineer, and
six Indians, he followed the Richelieu and
Champlain, which the savages called "the doorway
of the country," until the little party stood on
the northern end of Lake George, on the
evening of Corpus Christi; and with the catholic
spirit of the Jesuit missionary he christened it
Lac St. Sacrement, and this name it bore for a
whole century. On the 18th of October, 1646,
the tomahawk of the savage ended the life
of Father Jogues, who, after suffering many
tortures and indignities from his Iroquois captors,
died in their midst while working for their
salvation in his field of Christian labor.
The right of a discoverer to name new lakes
and rivers is old and unquestioned. A
missionary of the cross penetrated an unexplored
wilderness and found this noblest gem of the lower
Adirondacks, unknown to civilized man.
Impressed with this sublime work of his Creator,
the martyred priest christened it St. Sacrement.
One hundred years later came troops of soldiers
with mouths filled with strange oaths, cursing
their enemies. What respect had they for the
rights of discoverers or martyred missionaries?
So General Johnson, "an ambitious Irishman,"
discarded the Christian name of the lake and
replaced it with the English one of George.
He did not name it after St. George, the patron
saint of England, of whom history asserts that
he "was identical with a native of either
Cappadocia or Cilicia, who raised himself by flattery
of the great from the meanest circumstances to
be purveyor of bacon for the army, and who was
put to death with two of his ministers by a mob,
for peculations, A. D. 361;" but he took that of
a sensual king, George of England, in order to
advance his own interests with that monarch.
For more than a century Lake George was the
highway between Canada and the Hudson River.
Its pure waters were so much esteemed as to be
taken regularly to Canada to be consecrated and
used in the Roman Catholic churches in
baptismal and other sacred rites. The lake was
frequently occupied by armies, and the forts George
and William Henry, at the southern end, possess
most interesting historical associations. The
novelist Cooper made Lake George a region of
romance. To the young generation of
Americans who yearly visit its shores it is an El
Dorado, and the very air breathes love as they
glide in their light boats over its pellucid waters,
adding to the picturesqueness of the scene, and
supplying that need ever felt, no matter what
the natural beauty, -- the presence of man. I
believe even the Garden of Eden itself could
not have been perfect till among its shady
groves fell the shadows of our first parents.
The cool retreats, the jutting promontories, the
moss-covered rocks against which the waves
softly break, -- if these had tongues, they would,
like Tennyson's Brook, "go on forever," for
surely they would never have done telling the
tender tales they have heard. Nor would it be
possible to find a more fitting spot for the
cultivation of love and sentiment than this charming
lake affords; for Nature seems to have created
Lake George in one of her happiest moments.
This lake is about thirty-four miles long, and
varies in width from one to four miles. Its
greatest depth is about the same as that of
Champlain. It possesses (like all the American
lakes when used as fashionable watering-places)
the usual three hundred and sixty-five islands.
When I left the Mayeta I followed a narrow
footpath to a rough mountain road, which in
turn led me through the forests towards Lake
George. In an isolated dell I found the home
of one Levi Smith, who piloted me through the
woods to the lake, and ferried me in a skiff
across to Hague, when I dined at the hotel, and
resumed my journey along the shores to Sabbath
Day Point, where at four o'clock P. M. a steamer
on its trip from Ticonderoga to the south end of
the lake stopped and took me on board. We
steamed southward to where high mountains
shut in the lake, and for several miles threaded
the "Narrows" with its many pretty islands,
upon one of which Mr. J. Henry Hill, the
hermit-artist, had erected his modest home, and
where he toiled at his studies early and late,
summer and winter. Three goats and a squirrel
were his only companions in this lonely but
romantic spot.
During one cold winter, when the lake was
frozen over to a depth of two feet, and the
forests were mantled in snow, Mr. Hill's brother,
a civil engineer, made a visit to this icy region,
and the two brothers surveyed the Narrows,
making a correct map of that portion of the lake,
with all its islands carefully located. Mr. Hill
afterwards made an etching of this map,
surrounding it with an artistic border representing
objects of interest in the locality.
Late in the afternoon the steamer landed me
at Crosbyside, on the east shore, about a mile
from the head of the lake, resting beneath the
shady groves of which I beheld one of the most
charming views of Lake George. Early the
following morning I took up my abode with a
farmer, one William Lockhart, a genial and
eccentric gentleman, and a descendant of Sir
Walter Scott's son-in-law. Mr. Lockhart's little
cottage is half a mile north of Crosbyside, and
near the high bluff which Mr. Charles O'Conor,
the distinguished lawyer of New York city,
presented to the Paulist Fathers, whose
establishment is on Fifty-ninth Street in that metropolis.
Here the members of the new Order come to
pass their summer vacations, bringing with them
their theological students. The Paulists are hard
workers, visiting and holding "missions" in
Minnesota, California, and other parts of the United
States. They seem to feel forcibly the truth
expressed in these lines, which are to be found
in "Aspirations of Nature," a work written by
the founder of their order, Father Hecker:
"Existence is not a dream, but a solemn reality.
Life was not given to be thrown away on
miserable sophisms but to be employed in earnest
search after truth."
Mr. Lockhart kindly offered to escort me to the
convent of St. Mary's on the Lake; and after
following the mountain road for a quarter of a
mile to the north of the cottage of my companion,
we entered the shady grounds of the convent and
were kindly received on the long piazza by the
Father Superior, Rev. A. F. Hewit, who
introduced me to several of his co-laborers, a party
of them having just returned from an excursion
to the Harbor Islands at the northern end of the
Narrows, which property is owned by the Order.
I was told that the members of this new religious
establishment numbered about thirty, and that all
but four were converts from our Protestant faith.
Their property in New York city is probably
worth half a million of dollars, and the Sunday
schools under their charge contain about
fifteen hundred scholars. Here, among others,
I saw Father D____, who gave up his
distinguished position as instructor of the art of war
at the Military Academy of West Point, to
become a soldier of the Cross, preferring to serve
his Master by preaching the gospel of peace
to mankind. Under an overhanging rock at a
little distance were conversing, most happily,
two young priests, who a few years before had
fought on opposite sides during the civil strife
which resulted in the preservation of the Great
Republic.
A mathematician and astronomer from the
Cambridge and also from a government
observatory, who had donned the cassock, gave me
much valuable information in regard to the
mountain peaks of Lake George,* which he had
carefully studied and accurately measured. Through
his courtesy and generosity I am enabled to give
on the preceding page the results of his labors.
* Heights of mountains of Lake George, New York state,
obtained by Rev. George M. Searle, C. S. P.
Finch, between Buck and Spruce, 1595 feet.
Cat-Head, near Bolton, 1640 feet.
Prospect Mountain, west of Lake George village, 1730 feet.
Spruce, near Buck Mountain, 1820 feet.
Buck, east shore, south of Narrows, 2005 feet.
Rear, between Buck and Black, 2200 feet.
Black, the monarch of Lake George, 2320 feet.
From another authority I find that Lake Champlain is ninety-three
feet above the Atlantic tide-level, and that Lake George is
two hundred and forty feet above Lake Champlain, or three
hundred and thirty-three feet above the sea.
The interesting conversation was here
interrupted by the tolling of the convent bell. A
deep silence prevailed, as, with uncovered heads
and upon bended knees, the whole company most
devoutly crossed themselves while repeating
a prayer. I felt much drawn towards a young
priest with delicate and refined features, who
now engaged me in conversation. He was an
adept in all that related to boats. He loved the
beautiful lake, and was never happier than when
upon its mirrored surface, except when laboring
at his duties among the poor of the ninth
district of New York. The son of a distinguished
general, he inherited rare talents, which were
placed at his Saviour's service. His Christianity
was so liberal, his aspirations so noble, his
sympathies so strong, that I became much interested
in him; and when I left the lake, shortly after,
he quietly said, "When you return next summer
to build your cottage, let me help you plan the
boat-house." But when I returned to the shores
of Lake George, after the completion of my
voyage to the Gulf of Mexico, no helping hand was
there, and I built my boat-house unassisted; for
the gentle spirit of the missionary Paulist had
gone to God who gave it, and Father Rosencranz
was receiving his reward.
When I joined my travelling companion, David
Bodfish, he grievously inveighed against the
community of Whitehall because some dishonest
boatmen from the canal had appropriated the
stock of pipes and tobacco he had laid in for his
three or four days' voyage to Albany. "Sixty
cents' worth of new pipes and tobacco," said
David, in injured tones, "is a great loss, and a
Bodfish never was worth anything at work without
his tobacco. I used to pour speerits down to keep
my speerits up, but of late years I have depended
on tobacco, as the speerits one gets nowadays
isn't the same kind we got when I was a boy and
worked in old Hawkin Swamp."
Canal voyaging, after one has experienced the
sweet influences of lakes George and
Champlain, is indeed monotonous. But to follow
connecting watercourses it was necessary for the
Mayeta to traverse the Champlain Canal
(sixty-four) and the Erie Canal (six miles) from
Whitehall to Albany on the Hudson River, a total
distance of seventy miles.
There was nothing of sufficient interest in the
passage of the canal to be worthy of record save
the giving way of a lock-gate, near Troy, and
the precipitating of a canal-boat into the vortex
of waters that followed. By this accident my
boat was detained one day on the banks of the
canal. On the fourth day the Mayeta ended her
services by arriving at Albany, where, after a
journey of four hundred miles, experience had
taught me that I could travel more quickly in a
lighter boat, and more conveniently and
economically without a companion. It was now about
the first week in August, and the delay which
would attend the building of a new boat
especially adapted for the journey of two thousand
miles yet to be travelled would not be lost, as by
waiting a few weeks, time would be given for
the malaria on the rivers of New Jersey,
Delaware, and Maryland, and even farther south, to
be eradicated by the fall frosts. David returned
to his New Jersey home a happy man, invested
with the importance which attaches itself to a
great traveller. I had unfortunately contributed
to Mr. Bodfish's thirst for the marvellous by
reading to him at night, in our lonely camp,
Jules Verne's imaginative "Journey to the
Centre of the Earth." David was in ecstasies over
this wonderful contribution to fiction. He
preferred fiction to truth at any time. Once, while
reading to him a chapter of the above work, his
credulity was so challenged that he became
excited, and broke forth with, "Say, boss, how do
these big book-men larn to lie so well? does it
come nat'ral to them, or is it got by edication?"
I have since heard that when Mr. Bodfish arrived
in the pine-wood regions of New Jersey he
related to his friends his adventures "in furrin
parts," as he styled the Dominion of Canada,
and so interlaced the facts of the cruise of the
Mayeta with the fancies of the "Journey to the
Centre of the Earth," that to his neighbors the
region of the St. Lawrence has become a
country of awful and mysterious associations, while
the more knowing members of the community
which David honors with his presence are firmly
convinced that there never existed such a boat
as the Mayeta save in the wild imagination of
David Bodfish.
Mr. Bodfish's fictitious adventures, as related
by him, covered many thousand miles of canoe
voyaging. He had penetrated the region of ice
beyond Labrador, and had viewed with
complacency the north pole, which he found to be
a pitch-pine spar that had been erected by
the Coast Survey "to measure pints from."
He roundly censured the crews of whale-ships
which had mutilated this noble government
work by splitting much of it into kindling-wood.
Fortunately about two-thirds of Mr. Bodfish's
audience had no very clear conceptions of the
character of the north pole, some of them having
ignored its very existence. So they accepted
this portion of his narrative, while they rejected
the most reasonable part of his story.
The Mayeta was sent to Lake George, and
afterwards became a permanent resident. Two
years later her successor, the Paper Canoe, one
of the most happy efforts of the Messrs. Waters,
of Troy, was quietly moored beside her; and
soon after there was added to the little fleet a
cedar duck-boat, which had carried me on a
second voyage to the great southern sea. Here,
anchored safely under the high cliffs, rocked
gently by the loving waters of Lake George, rest
these faithful friends. They carried me over
five thousand miles, through peaceful rivers and
surging seas. They have shared my dangers;
they now share my peace.