duly qualified with New-England rum, and then debated as to the course to be pursued.

They were confident that the Indians, on their way to Canada, would take, as was usual, the circuitous route of Wood Creek, instead of Lake St. Sacrament, where they would be impeded by a portage of several miles at its northern extremity. By pushing their way rapidly up the Hudson, and across the intervening land to the lake, they had no doubt that they had outstripped the slow progress of their enemy, who were struggling northward through the forests farther to the east. Their plan was to pass down lake St. Sacrament to Ticonderoga, and there lie in ambush to waylay the Indians as they came in their canoes out of Wood Creek. Ticonderoga was not then a fort, bristling with cannon, to command the narrow straits around it, though it had borne from time immemorial its present name, which is an Iroquois word, meaning 'the meeting of the waters.' It was then only a bare rocky promontory thrust out between the two lakes, and from the singularity of its position, regarded by the Indians with some superstitious veneration. By this plan, the pursuers thought that they should meet the savages, even should they take the route of the lake.

That very night the frontiersmen sought out materials for making their canoe. No birch trees were at hand; but they found a huge old spruce, straight and tall, that bore the honors of a century. A quarter of an hour's labor brought it thundering to the ground, when the bark was stripped in one piece from its trunk, by cutting it lengthwise, and carefully prying it off its sides. The naked carcass of the unfortunate tree, as delicately white as driven snow, was rolled aside to rot in the damp forest. This part of their labor accomplished, the adventurers wrapped themselves in their wet blankets, and laid down around their half-extinguished fires.

My ancestor had at the bottom of his character, a spirit of adventure which would sometimes be exalted to a height that made him perfectly reckless of dangers and obstacles. The fit was on him now, as he paced along the narrow beach of wet sand. In the wild exhilaration of his purpose and his situation, he was indifferent whether he bequeathed his body to the family vault in Deerfield church-yard, or flung it away to waste among the lonely mountains. His imagination was too dull to trouble him with images of the dangers that awaited his enterprise; or perhaps his nerves were too strong to be startled by any such fancies.

The next morning rose bright, warm, and soft. White thin mists, it is true, still rolled over the surface of the slumbering water, and entangled themselves among the boughs of the forest; but the fresh green of the mountains contrasted beautifully with the pure white of the wreaths of vapor that half involved them. The frontiersmen worked industriously on their canoe, which as it approached completion appeared unable to hold the party, so that another had to be made. There was ash for the frame, pine to guard the bottom, and the tough fibres of spruce to sew the parts together: all the materials were at hand; but not to detain the reader with bare and unprofitable details of canoe-making, I will only tell him that the afternoon was nearly

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spent before the little vessels were complete; and that they were so frail and perilous, owing to the green state of the bark, that no man of these peaceful times would have ventured his life in one of them. They embarked, however twelve bold vindictive men — and paddled with their best speed northward along the beautiful St. Sacrament.

It was indeed a beautiful scene; peaceful, yet wild and majestic. So pure was the atmosphere, and so limpid the waters, that as they skirted the precipitous eastern shore, the little fishes playing twenty feet below were as distinctly seen as the quivering birch and the rough cedar that leaned in the sunlight from the cliff above. Then they stood out into the broad lake, and steered down toward an island that lay nearly midway between the shores, doubled in the unruffled water. The perch and trout darted to the right and left as the shadows of the canoes wavered over the sunny rocks and stones under the surface, all around the shores of this savage paradise. Carefully guiding the little vessels into a sort of cove, they drew them from the water upon a narrow plat of fresh grass. The island, which was that now called Diamond Island, was almost covered with a rich growth of trees: there was, however, a little space in the centre, where, from some accident, nothing was growing but the soft grass; and here they made their camp.

The sun meanwhile had sunk below the horizon. The western steeps grew brown and shadowy, while a thousand undefined and changing hues of purple and red were reflected on those to the east, and the whole bright circumference of encircling mountains, with every island, and every reddened cloud, was mirrored in the still waters. A stream of sunlight still poured on the landscape through a gap of the mountains, illumining some spots and leaving the rest in obscurity. It fell upon a little islet not far distant, from the midst of which rose up, above a crowd of young shrubs and saplings, an old distorted pine tree. Its foliage was gone; but light mosses hung from its knotted and broken boughs and its storm-beaten trunk, with no breath of wind in that calm evening to stir them. It looked like the veteran of a century's wars some old Mohawk chief, perhaps, whose voice was cracked, his arm withered, and his grim features shrivelled, but who would still dance the war-dance and scream the war-song, and to the last gasp of his worn-out life exult in the tortures of his enemy. But soon the transient sunbeam left the old pine; its charm was fled, and it was turned to a common tree again. Little by little, the light passed away from the noble landscape, and darkness sunk down on St. Sacrament. A low heavy sound came booming on the ears of the adventurers; it was the evening gun from the distant French post of Fort Frederick. When Endicott again left the circle of the camp-fire light, and putting aside the branches, looked out upon the lake, he saw the mountains a mass of deep shadow before him, with a lingering red light in the sky above. A fish now and then splashed on the blackened surface; and suddenly a whip-poor-will began his loud call from the opposite shore.

My ancestor was awakened in the morning by the hoarse cawing of a pair of crows, that went flapping slowly over the island. Their meal

finished, the party embarked again. The lake, so beautiful at evening, was no less so in the morning; for unlike many a ball-room beauty, its charms were such as could bear the broad light. The leaking of one of their flimsy canoes, which they were obliged to repair, delayed them so much that the day was far advanced before they reached the 'First Narrows,' where the lake contracts itself, and is dotted with a multitude of islands. They grew impatient and anxious lest the savages should reach Ticonderoga before them. They had better cause for anxiety than they thought; who can foretell the capricious movements of a party of savages? Their restless and watchful enemy had already caught sight of them, and were following their course along the shore.

They skirted the wooded banks of a long island that lay parallel to the main land and close to it, near the entrance of the Narrows. It was a beautiful sight to see the trees glide past them, and the water ripple upon the pebbles with the motion of the deep-laden canoes; but when the island was past, the main shore lay off on their right, with its swelling foliage obscured by a rich shade, and the cool dark waters sleeping in its shadows. Endicott was not in a poetical mood — indeed, he seldom was; but he could not help gazing on a scene so quiet and yet so picturesque. He was startled suddenly into life and action. A female voice, in hasty and terrified accents, came from the woods.

here!

I am

dear Endicott! - keep away!- keep away! - they are going to fi ' but here it was abruptly stifled. The men instinctively ceased paddling, and then pushed back the canoes farther into the lake. The matter required no explanation: all saw at once that nothing had saved them from falling into an ambush of the enemy they were in pursuit of, but the heroic self-devotion of the prisoner. Most of the party were men made reckless by misery, with every feeling and instinct overwhelmed by a burning hatred of the Indians, and a keen thirst for vengeance upon the accursed race. Only two or three of them hesitated as to the course to be pursued. Neither regard for their own lives nor that of the poor captive had much weight with them. Endicott, on his part, was as eager as the rest, and longed to rush to the rescue of Sarah, without thinking of the peril to which his rashness would expose her, if indeed she had not already been made a victim to the fury of her captors. The canoes drew back and retraced their course along the island, which effectually protected them and concealed their motions, till they rounded its farther extremity, and made directly for the shore. Then it was a matter of doubt whether a salute of bullets from the woods would not reward their temerity. The very hardihood of the attempt alone saved them; for the savages, who were of twice their number, did not dream that they would venture to land in the teeth of such peril. The canoes ploughed the water into furrows. My ancestor's blood was up. He jumped from the foremost canoe, and waded to the beach; but as he reached it, a sinewy hand griped his shoulder, and a stern voice admonished him that that was no place nor time to yield to frantic impulses.

It would be hard to imagine a situation more perilous than that into which these men had placed themselves, or one in which danger ap

peared under a more horrid and insidious aspect. Nothing of the enemy was visible after they had entered the woods, though they might be concealed behind every rock or tree. They listened awhile, and then began cautiously to advance toward that part of the shore whence the voice had proceeded. In a few minutes they came upon the manifest traces of a large body of savages; and here again they stopped to listen. It was close by a large brook that descended from the upland forests to the lake, urging its way over great piles of moss-grown rocks; plunging with a sullen, heavy roar into obscure ravines, or pouring itself into deep basins and hollows among the rocks, before it streamed glancing out through the foliage into the gay sunshine of the lake. The forest was a dismal contrast to the bright landscape they had just left. The chill confined air was of that heavy nature that oppresses the spirit, and brings consumption to the lungs. Not a ray of sunlight could penetrate the dense foliage above; all around breathed cold and dampness; the black columns of the standing trees that seeemed sweating a clammy moisture; the moss-grown carcasses of those that lay prostrate and decaying, piled in masses together; and the slippery green rocks themselves. There was no undergrowth but the stiff spreading shoots of the hardy spruce and balsam fir, which covered the rough and broken ground, affording abundant lurking places for an enemy. All was quiet as death except the stream with its dull plunging.

They stood still for some minutes, when a man at length offered himself to go forward and search for the enemy. Crouching from tree to tree, he began slowly to pick his way over the obstructions of the dangerous ground, glancing watchfully in every direction, and gradually approaching a ridge of rocks overgrown with fringe and piles of dripping moss, that was discernible through the trees, several rods higher up. Here he paused and listened long before he ventured to ascend. When he had got to the top, and clinging to some projecting roots, peered cautiously over the heap of logs and refuse that lay there, a tawny, braceletted arm, and a little hatchet, waved for an instant above this ambush, and the man fell back doubled to a ball. Then the Indian yell burst forth. In a moment, the woods above were filled with dark, demon-like figures, that came leaping down over the ridge and darting among the rocks and shrubbery, while the air vibrated with their shrill cries, and was clogged with the smoke of their rapid firing. Not a voice was raised in reply, except the shout of the man in command. In spite of this furious and characteristic attempt to strike them with a panic, the white men held their ground, or only drew back a yard or two. Indeed, they could not have retreated farther, as the lake was close behind, and their only alternative was to maintain their position or be killed on the spot; so each sheltered himself behind a tree, and stubbornly refused to yield. The Indians rushed up yelling close upon them, when one or two were shot down by the iron-nerved woodsmen, at which their noisy and ostentatious display ceased at once. They all slunk behind the cover of rock, trees, or bushes, whence the incessant flashes of their guns now glanced out on every side, like darting tongues of serpents. But the sharp, quick crack of the New

England rifles mingled with the louder and duller reports of the Indian guns. The fight became already more than doubtful; for as the fierce impetuosity of the savages cooled at the unexpected check they had received, the deep Anglo-Saxon passion mounted higher in the breasts of the whites. Not that they gave vent to it, but it burned intensely within, rousing and concentrating all the faculties, and giving double strength and alertness to mind and sense. With foreheads knit, and lips pressed close together, they calculated the effect of every shot, and seized every advantage that offered.

The Indians continually shouted taunts and insults in broken English or Canadian French. There was one warrior, in particular, who had been remarkable for his reckless intrepidity in the first onset, and now lay crouched behind a pile of rocks and logs, loading and firing, and abusing his enemy meanwhile to the best of his power. He addressed himself especially to the nearest white man, by no means indulging him with that figurative rhetoric which I have read that the Indians are accustomed to employ on such occasions; on the contrary, his language was the vilest and most profane that he could gather from the refuse of white men, mingled with lying boasts of his own exploits. Among the rest, he told his hearer that he had killed his wife, and eaten her heart, and to give emphasis to his assertion, he raised the scalp of a woman on his ramrod, and shook it above the rock. The white man did not reply a word, but he noticed a spot in the pile of logs behind which he knew the savage lay, where the wood seemed to his eye sufficiently decayed to allow the passage of a bullet; and at this place, he fired his rifle. The Indian did not shriek as he received the wound, but rose convulsively from his shelter, when two more bullets were instantly fired into him, and he dropped dead. At this the disheartened Indians broke: leaping backward from tree to tree, they retired up the hill; the white men pressed upon them with every faculty at its tension; hand, foot, and eye on the alert. Thus, in spite of the disadvantage of the ground, they forced them slowly up the ascent.

Many rods up, a dilapidated old oak tree, covered all over with wens and protuberances, rose from the midst of the rocks, and stretched its solitary branch over the stream. It had once been the monarch of that forest, but the lightning had splintered away its top, and age had filled its gigantic trunk with decay. Around it, the savages clung tenaciously, and made their last stand. At length, as the bullets hailed in upon them, and the white men pressed them closer and closer, they broke entirely, and with a wild cry retreated, scattering up the forest. Then, for the first time, a stern deep shout, very different from the quavering yells of the Indians, burst from the throats of the frontiersmen. Throughout the fight, my ancestor's rifle had done good service, but now he could contain himself no longer. That impetuous ardor that sometimes sleeps beneath the habitual coldness of New-England, now rose up within him and mastered him. When the savages broke, he sprang out of his shelter. Clear the way, scoundrels!' he shouted, dashing up the ascent with his rifle clubbed; but then his cap was struck from his head; a thousand sparkles flashed before his eyes, and he fell down headlong among the decayed logs and the wet moss.

His