 | The snow-image |  |
OLD TICONDEROGA.
A PICTURE OF THE PAST.
The greatest attraction, in this vicinity, is the famous
old fortress of Ticonderoga, the remains of which are
visible from the piazza of the tavern, on a swell of land
that shuts in the prospect of the lake. Those celebrated
heights, Mount Defiance and Mount Independence,
familiar to all Americans in history, stand too prominent
not to be recognized, though neither of them precisely
correspond to the images excited by their names. In
truth, the whole scene, except the interior of the fortress,
disappointed me. Mount Defiance, which one pictures
as a steep, lofty, and rugged hill, of most formidable
aspect, frowning down with the grim visage of a precipice
on old Ticonderoga, is merely a long and wooded
ridge; and bore, at some former period, the gentle name
of Sugar Hill. The brow is certainly difficult to climb,
and high enough to look into every corner of the fortress.
St. Clair's most probable reason, however, for neglecting
to occupy it, was the deficiency of troops to man the
works already constructed, rather than the supposed
inaccessibility of Mount Defiance. It is singular that
the French never fortified this height, standing, as it
does, in the quarter whence they must have looked for
the advance of a British army.
In my first view of the ruins, I was favored with the
recently from West Point, where he had gained credit for
great military genius. I saw nothing but confusion in what
chiefly interested him; straight lines and zigzags, defence
within defence, wall opposed to wall, and ditch intersecting
ditch; oblong squares of masonry below the surface
of the earth, and huge mounds, or turf-covered hills
of stone, above it. On one of these artificial hillocks, a
pine-tree has rooted itself, and grown tall and strong,
since the banner-staff was levelled. But where my
unmilitary glance could trace no regularity, the young
lieutenant was perfectly at home. He fathomed the
meaning of every ditch, and formed an entire plan of the
fortress from its half-obliterated lines. His description
of Ticonderoga would be as accurate as a geometrical
theorem, and as barren of the poetry that has clustered
round its decay. I viewed Ticonderoga as a place of
ancient strength, in ruins for half a century: where the
flags of three nations had successively waved, and none
waved now; where armies had struggled, so long ago
that the bones of the slain were mouldered; where Peace
had found a heritage in the forsaken haunts of War.
Now the young West Pointer, with his lectures on ravelins,
counterscarps, angles, and covered ways, made it an
affair of brick and mortar and hewn stone, arranged on
certain regular principles, having a good deal to do with
mathematics, but nothing at all with poetry.
I should have been glad of a hoary veteran to totter
by my side, and tell me, perhaps, of the French garrisons
and their Indian allies, — of Abercrombie, Lord Howe,
and Amherst, — of Ethan Allen's triumph and St.
Clair's surrender. The old soldier and the old fortress
though vivid as the image of Ticonderoga in the lake,
would harmonize with the gray influence of the scene.
A survivor of the long-disbanded garrisons, though but a
private soldier, might have mustered his dead chiefs and
comrades, — some from Westminster Abbey, and English
church-yards, and battle-fields in Europe, — others
from their graves here in America, — others, not a few,
who lie sleeping round the fortress; he might have
mustered them all, and bid them march through the
ruined gateway, turning their old historic faces on me, as
they passed. Next to such a companion, the best is one's
own fancy.
At another visit I was alone, and, after rambling all
over the ramparts, sat down to rest myself in one of the
roofless barracks. These are old French structures, and
appear to have occupied three sides of a large area, now
overgrown with grass, nettles, and thistles. The one in
which I sat was long and narrow, as all the rest had
been, with peaked gables. The exterior walls were
nearly entire, constructed of gray, flat, unpicked stones,
the aged strength of which promised long to resist the
elements, if no other violence should precipitate their
fall. The roof, floors, partitions, and the rest of the
wood-work, had probably been burnt, except some bars
of stanch old oak, which were blackened with fire, but
still remained imbedded into the window-sills and over
the doors. There were a few particles of plastering near
the chimney, scratched with rude figures, perhaps by a
soldier's hand. A most luxuriant crop of weeds had
sprung up within the edifice, and hid the scattered fragments
of the wall. Grass and weeds grew in the windows,
by step, till a tuft of yellow flowers was waving on the
highest peak of the gable. Some spicy herb diffused a
pleasant odor through the ruin. A verdant heap of
vegetation had covered the hearth of the second floor,
clustering on the very spot where the huge logs had
mouldered to glowing coals, and flourished beneath the
broad flue, which had so often puffed the smoke over a
circle of French or English soldiers. I felt that there
was no other token of decay so impressive as that bed
of weeds in the place of the back-log.
Here I sat, with those roofless walls about me, the
clear sky over my head, and the afternoon sunshine
falling gently bright through the window-frames and
doorway. I heard the tinkling of a cow-bell, the twittering
of birds, and the pleasant hum of insects. Once
a gay butterfly, with four gold-speckled wings, came
and fluttered about my head, then flew up and lighted
on the highest tuft of yellow flowers, and at last took
wing across the lake. Next a bee buzzed through the
sunshine, and found much sweetness among the weeds.
After watching him till he went off to his distant hive, I
closed my eyes on Ticonderoga in ruins, and cast a
dream-like glance over pictures of the past, and scenes
of which this spot had been the theatre.
At first, my fancy saw only the stern hills, lonely
lakes, and venerable woods. Not a tree, since their
seeds were first scattered over the infant soil, had felt
the axe, but had grown up and flourished through its
long generation, had fallen beneath the weight of years,
been buried in green moss, and nourished the roots of
others as gigantic. Hark! A light paddle dips into
Indian chief has passed, painted and feather-crested,
armed with a bow of hickory, a stone tomahawk, and
flint-headed arrows. But the ripple had hardly vanished
from the water, when a white flag caught the breeze,
over a castle in the wilderness, with frowning ramparts
and a hundred cannon. There stood a French chevalier,
commandant of the fortress, paying court to a copper-colored
lady, the princess of the land, and winning her
wild love by the arts which had been successful with
Parisian dames. A war-party of French and Indians
were issuing from the gate to lay waste some village of
New England. Near the fortress there was a group of
dancers. The merry soldiers footing it with the swart
savage maids; deeper in the wood, some red men were
growing frantic around a keg of the fire-water; and elsewhere
a Jesuit preached the faith of high cathedrals
beneath a canopy of forest boughs, and distributed crucifixes
to be worn beside English scalps.
I tried to make a series of pictures from the old
French war, when fleets were on the lake and armies in
the woods, and especially of Abercrombie's disastrous
repulse, where thousands of lives were utterly thrown
away; but, being at a loss how to order the battle, I
chose an evening scene in the barracks, after the fortress
had surrendered to Sir Jeffrey Amherst. What an
immense fire blazes on that hearth, gleaming on swords,
bayonets, and musket-barrels, and blending with the hue
of the scarlet coats till the whole barrack-room is quivering
with ruddy light! One soldier has thrown himself
down to rest, after a deer-hunt, or perhaps a long run
stand up to wrestle, and are on the point of coming to
blows. A fifer plays a shrill accompaniment to a drummer's
song, — a strain of light love and bloody war, with
a chorus thundered forth by twenty voices. Meantime,
a veteran in the corner is prosing about Dettingen and
Fontenoye, and relates camp-traditions of Marlborough's
battles, till his pipe, having been roguishly charged with
gunpowder, makes a terrible exploison under his nose.
And now they all vanish in a puff of smoke from the
chimney.
I merely glanced at the ensuing twenty years, which
glided peacefully over the frontier fortress, till Ethan
Allen's shout was heard, summoning it to surrender “in
the name of the great Jehovah and of the Continental
Congress.” Strange allies! thought the British captain.
Next came the hurried muster of the soldiers of liberty,
when the cannon of Burgoyne, pointing down upon their
stronghold from the brow of Mount Defiance, announced
a new conqueror of Ticonderoga. No virgin fortress,
this! Forth rushed the motley throng from the barracks,
one man wearing the blue and buff of the Union, another
the red coat of Britain, a third a dragoon's jacket, and a
fourth a cotton frock; here was a pair of leather breeches,
and striped trousers there; a grenadier's cap on one
head, and a broad-brimmed hat, with a tall feather, on
the next; this fellow shouldering a king's arm, that
might throw a bullet to Crown Point, and his comrade a
long fowling-piece, admirable to shoot ducks on the lake.
In the midst of the bustle, when the fortress was all
alive with its last warlike scene, the ringing of a bell on
the lake made me suddenly unclose my eyes, and behold
peaceful in the sun as a warrior's grave.
Hastening to the rampart, I perceived that the signal
had been given by the steamboat Franklin, which landed
a passenger from Whitehall at the tavern, and resumed
its progress northward, to reach Canada the next morning.
A sloop was pursuing the same track; a little skiff
had just crossed the ferry; while a scow, laden with
lumber, spread its huge square sail, and went up the lake.
The whole country was a cultivated farm. Within
musket-shot of the ramparts lay the neat villa of Mr.
Pell, who, since the Revolution, has become proprietor of
a spot for which France, England and America, have so
often struggled. How forcibly the lapse of time and
change of circumstances came home to my apprehension!
Banner would never wave again, nor cannon roar, nor
blood be shed, nor trumpet stir up a soldier's heart, in
this old fort of Ticonderoga. Tall trees had grown upon
its ramparts, since the last garrison marched out, to
return no more, or only at some dreamer's summons,
gliding from the twilight past to vanish among realities.
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