om was nearly a mile
behind--were struggling through briers and thickets to their aid. So
close was the brushwood that it was full half an hour before they could
get their followers ranged in some kind of order in front of the enemy;
and even then each man was forced to fight for himself as best he could.
Humphreys, the biographer of Putnam, blames Rogers severely for not
coming at once to the aid of the Connecticut men; but two of their
captains declare that he came with all possible speed; while a regular
officer present highly praised him to Abercromby for cool and
officer-like conduct.[642] As a man his deserts were small; as a
bushfighter he was beyond reproach.

[Footnote 642: _Letter from the Camp at Lake George, 5 Sept. 1758_,
signed by Captains Maynard and Giddings, and printed in the _Boston
Weekly Advertiser_. "Rogers deserves much to be commended." _Abercromby
to Pitt, 19 Aug. 1758_.]

Another officer recounts from hearsay the remarkable conduct of an
Indian, who sprang into the midst of the English and killed two of them
with his hatchet; then mounted on a log and defied them all. One of the
regulars tried to knock him down with the butt of his musket; but though
the blow made him bleed, he did not fall, and would have killed his
assailant if Rogers had not shot him dead.[643] The firing lasted about
two hours. At length some of the Canadians gave way, and the rest of the
French and Indians followed.[644] They broke into small parties to elude
pursuit, and reuniting towards evening, made their bivouac on a spot
surrounded by impervious swamps.

[Footnote 643: _Thomas Barnsley to Bouquet, 7 Sept. 1758_.]

[Footnote 644: _Doreil au Ministre, 31 Aout, 1757_.]

Rogers remained on the field and buried all his own dead, forty-nine in
number. Then he resumed his march to Fort Edward, carrying the wounded
on litters of branches till the next day, when he met a detachment
coming with wagons to his relief. A party sent out soon after for the
purpose reported that they had found and buried more than a hundred
French and Indians. From this time forward the war-parties from
Ticonderoga greatly relented in their activity.

The adventures of the captured Putnam were sufficiently remarkable. The
Indians, after dragging him to the rear, lashed him fast to a tree so
that he could not move a limb, and a young savage amused himself by
throwing a hatchet at his head, striking it into the wood as close as
possible to the