hout material effect, and without
provoking a reply, the British troops were busy throughout the day and
night cutting a road through rocks and trees and up rugged defiles.
Guns, ammunition and stores, all were carried up the hill in the
night; the cannon were hauled up from tree to tree, and before morning
the ground was levelled for the battery on which they were to be
mounted. To this work, thus achieved by a _coup de main_, they gave
the name of Fort Defiance.

On the 5th of July, to their astonishment and consternation, the
garrison beheld a legion of red-coats on the summit of this hill,
constructing works which must soon lay the fortress at their mercy. In
this appalling emergency, General St. Clair called a council of war.
What was to be done? The batteries from this new fort would probably
be open the next day: by that time Ticonderoga might be completely
invested, and the whole garrison exposed to capture. They had not
force sufficient for one half the works, and General Schuyler,
supposed to be at Albany, could afford them no relief. The danger was
imminent; delay might prove fatal. It was unanimously determined to
evacuate both Ticonderoga and Mount Independence that very night, and
to retreat to Skenesborough (now Whitehall), at the upper part of the
lake, about thirty miles distant, where there was a stockaded fort.
The main body of the army, led by General St. Clair, were to cross to
Mount Independence and push for Skenesborough by land, taking a
circuitous route through the woods on the east side of the lake, by
the way of Castleton.

The cannon, stores and provisions, together with the wounded and the
women, were to be embarked on board of two hundred bateaux and
conducted to the upper extremity of the lake by Colonel Long with six
hundred men, two hundred of whom, in five armed galleys, were to form
a rear-guard.

It was now three o'clock in the afternoon; yet all the preparations
were to be made for the coming night, and that with as little bustle
and movement as possible, for they were overlooked by Fort Defiance,
and their intentions might be suspected. Everything, therefore, was
done quietly, but alertly; in the meantime, to amuse the enemy a
cannonade was kept up every half hour toward the new battery on the
hill. As soon as the evening closed, and their movements could not be
discovered, they began in all haste to load the boats. Such of the
cannon as could not be taken were ordered to be spi