Progressing northward from Ticonderoga, the lake suddenly makes a
right-angled narrow bend to the westward, its channel compressed
between a broad, flat, low promontory coming up from the south, and
the protruding opposite shore that encircles and almost meets it.
These are the Champlain Narrows, the southern promontory being Crown
Point, and the opposite rock compressing the channel Chimney Point. A
broad bay opens behind Crown Point to the westward, and under the
shadow of Mount Bulwagga, the end of one of the long Adirondack
ranges, is the village of Port Henry, a producer of iron-ores, there
being furnaces here as well as on the shore south of Crown Point. Upon
the southern promontory, thus thrust out between the lake and Bulwagga
Bay, are the ruins of the famous fortress of Crown Point, which so
well guarded the narrow crooked channel and its approaches, and closed
the "door of the country" leading from Canada. Soon after Champlain's
time the French, who held all this region, built a stone fort on the
opposite point, and ambitiously planned a province, stretching from
the Connecticut River to Lake Ontario, of which this was to be the
capital. A town was started, with vineyards and gardens, and the
"Pointe de la Couronne," as it was called, became widely known. Early
in the eighteenth century the French built Fort St. Frederic here in
the form of a five-pointed star, with bastions at the angles, and its
ruins yet remain, showing traces of limestone walls, barracks, a
church, and tower. For thirty years this fort was the base of supplies
for forays on the colonial settlements, but it fell before Lord
Amherst's march northward in 1759. This English conquest translated
the "Pointe de la Couronne" into Crown Point, and then the British
Government constructed enormous works to control the lake passage.
There thus was built the great English fortress of Crown Point,
covering the highest parts of the peninsular promontory southwestward
from the old French fort. The limestone rocks were cut into deeply,
and ramparts raised twenty-five feet thick and high, the citadel being
a half-mile around. The ruins of these heavy walls, the ditches,
spacious parade and demolished barracks, give an idea of the costly
but obsolete military construction of that time. These extensive works
were blown up by an exploding powder magazine.
From the northeastern bastion of Crown Point a covered way leads to
the lake, and here a well was sunk ninety feet deep for a water
supply. Tradition told of vast treasures concealed by the French, and
so excited did the people become that a joint-stock company was formed
to search for them, clearing out the well and making excavations, but
nothing was found but some lead and iron. The ruins are in lonely
magnificence to-day, the red-thorn bushes brilliantly adorning them,
and the place is a popular picnic-ground. From the northern ramparts
there is a magnificent view of the distant Green Mountains on the
right hand, with their gentle fields and meadows stretching down to
the lake, and the rugged Adirondack foothills on the left, the distant
dark mountain ranges looming far away behind them, with the huge
broad-capped "Giant of the Valley" standing up prominently. Gazing at
their sombre contour, the reason can be readily divined why the
Indians called this vast weird region Cony-a-craga, or the "Dismal
Wilderness." The higher Adirondack summits, composed of the hardest
granite, are said by the geologists to be the oldest land on the
globe and the first showing itself above the universal waters. Some
distance above Port Henry is Westport Landing, the village standing in
the deep recesses of Northwest Bay, where the long ridge of Split Rock
Mountain, stretching towards the northeast, makes a high border for
the bay. This curious ridge is of historical interest. The outer
extremity is a cliff thirty feet high, covering about a half-acre, and
separated from the main ridge by a cleft twelve feet wide cut down
beneath the water. This cliff was the ancient Rock Reggio, named from
an Indian chief drowned there, and was for a long time the boundary
between the New York Iroquois and the Canadian Algonquins, whose lands
were held respectively by the English and the French. It is mentioned
in various old Colonial treaties as fixing the boundary between New
York and Canada, but during the Revolution the Americans passed far
beyond it, conquering and holding the land for seventy-seven miles
northward to the present national boundary.