mulated by the examples, of their leaders, they had found their
courage, and maintained their ancient reputation, with zeal that did
justice to the stern character of their commander. As if satisfied with
the toil of marching through the wilderness to encounter his enemy, the
French general, though of approved skill, had neglected to seize the
adjacent mountains; whence the besieged might have been exterminated
with impunity, and which, in the more modern warfare of the country,
would not have been neglected for a single hour. This sort of contempt
for eminences, or rather dread of the labor of ascending them, might
have been termed the besetting weakness of the warfare of the period. It
originated in the simplicity of the Indian contests, in which, from the
nature of the combats, and the density of the forests, fortresses were
rare, and artillery next to useless. The carelessness engendered by
these usages descended even to the war of the Revolution, and lost the
States the important fortress of Ticonderoga, opening a way for the army
of Burgoyne into what was then the bosom of the country. We look back at
this ignorance, or infatuation, whichever it may be called, with wonder,
knowing that the neglect of an eminence, whose difficulties, like those
of Mount Defiance, have been so greatly exaggerated, would, at the
present time, prove fatal to the reputation of the engineer who had
planned the works at their base, or to that of the general whose lot it
was to defend them.

The tourist, the valetudinarian, or the amateur of the beauties of
nature, who, in the train of his four-in-hand, now rolls through the
scenes we have attempted to describe, in quest of information, health,
or pleasure, or floats steadily towards his object on those artificial
waters which have sprung up under the administration of a statesman[21]
who has dared to stake his political character on the hazardous issue,
is not to suppose that his ancestors traversed those hills, or struggled
with the same currents with equal facility. The transportation of a
single heavy gun was often considered equal to a victory gained; if,
happily, the difficulties of the passage had not so far separated it
from its necessary concomitant, the ammunition, as to render it no more
than an useless tube of unwieldy iron.

The evils of this state of things pressed heavily on the fortunes of the
resolute Scotsman who now defended William Henry. Though his adversary
neglecte