The Lake George outlet stream, which the French called Carillon, from
its waterfalls, was known by the Indians as Ticonderoga, or "the
sounding waters." It winds through a ridge about four miles wide
between the lakes, is pretty but turbulent, and falls down two series
of cascades, giving music and water-power to the paper and other mills
at the villages of Alexandria and Ticonderoga, the descent being two
hundred and thirty feet. The upper cascade at Alexandria goes down
rapids descending two hundred feet in a mile, and the lower cascade is
a perpendicular fall of thirty feet at Ticonderoga, this village being
called by its people "Ty," for short. Here stood the original French
Fort Carillon guarding the pass at the verge of Lake Champlain. After
the horrible massacre at Fort William Henry, the British colonists
determined upon revenge, and General James Abercrombie, who had been
made the Commander-in-Chief of all the British forces in North
America through political influence, gathered an army of nearly
sixteen thousand men at the head of the lake, while Montcalm was at
Carillon with barely one-fourth the number. Abercrombie, however, was
little more than the nominal British commander. General Wolfe
described him as a "heavy man;" and another soldier wrote that he was
"an aged gentleman, infirm in body and mind." The British Government
meant that the actual command should be in the hands of General Lord
Howe, who was in fact the real chief, described by Wolfe as "that
great man" and "the noblest Englishman that has appeared in my time,
and the best soldier in the British army;" while Pitt called him "a
character of ancient times; a complete model of military virtue." This
young nobleman, then in his thirty-fourth year, was Viscount George
Augustus Howe, in the Irish peerage, the oldest of the three famous
Howe brothers who took part in the American wars. The army, Parkman
says, "felt him from General to drummer-boy." In that army were also
two future famous men, Israel Putnam and John Stark.
They advanced northward on Lake George, July 5, 1758, in a grand
flotilla of over a thousand boats, with two floating castles, the
procession brilliant with rich uniforms and waving banners, and the
music from its many bands echoing from the enclosing hills. Fenimore
Cooper, in _Satanstoe_, gives a vivid description of this pageant.
Passing beyond the Narrows, Abercrombie, on a Sunday morning, landed
upon the fertile Sabbath Day Point to refresh his men before making
the attack, thus naming it. Among them was Major Rogers, the Ranger,
and in front could be seen the steep and rugged cliff of Rogers'
Slide, named after him, its face a comparatively smooth inclined plane
of naked rock, rising four hundred feet. The tale, as Rogers told it,
was, that the previous winter, fleeing from the Indians, he practiced
upon them a ruse, making them believe he had actually slid down this
rock to the frozen surface of the lake. He was on snowshoes, the
savages following, and ran out to the edge of the precipice, casting
down his knapsack and provision-bag. Then turning around and wearing
his snowshoes backward, he went to a neighboring ravine, and making
his way safely down, fled over the ice to the head of the lake. The
Indians saw the double set of shoe-marks in the snow, and concluded
two men had jumped down rather than be captured. They saw Rogers going
off over the ice, and believing he had safely slid down the face of
the cliff, regarded him as specially protected by the Great Spirit and
abandoned the pursuit. Thus has his name clung to the remarkable rock,
though he was said to be a great braggart, and there were people who
suggested that he ought to have been a leading member of the "Ananias
Club." Beyond the slide, at the foot of the lake, is the low-lying
Prisoners' Island, where the British kept the captives they took, and
nearby Howe's Landing, where the army landed to attack Fort Carillon.
There was then a dense forest covering almost all the surface between
the lakes, greatly obstructed by undergrowth, and Montcalm had
protected his position at Carillon with massive breastworks of logs,
eight or nine feet high, having in front masses of trees cut down with
their tops turned outwards, thus making it almost impossible for an
enemy to get through, the sharpened points of the broken branches
bristling like the quills of a porcupine. As the British troops
advanced in four columns, they got much mixed up in the forest and
undergrowth, and Howe, with Putnam and a force of rangers at the head
of the principal column, although they could not see ahead, suddenly
came upon the French, were challenged, and a hot skirmish followed, in
which Howe was shot through the breast and dropped dead. Then all was
confusion, but they beat this French advanced force and killed or
captured most of them. The loss of Howe, however, was irretrievable,
for Abercrombie, deprived of his advice, seemed unable to direct. The
fort was attacked after a fashion, but the troops floundered about in
the woods and the network of felled trees, suffered from a murderous
fire, and were beaten and hurled back discomfited to the shore of the
lake. A few days later the shattered army, having left nearly two
thousand dead and dying in front of Carillon, sailed back up the lake
again to Fort William Henry. Leadership had perished with Lord Howe.
His monument is in Westminster Abbey, London, having been erected to
his memory by the General Court of the Colony of Massachusetts, who
voted £250 for it. So proud was Montcalm of his victory that he caused
a great cross to be erected on the battlefield, with an inscription in
Latin composed by himself, which is thus translated:
"Soldier and chief and rampart's strength are naught;
Behold the conquering Cross! 'Tis God the triumph wrought."