he order--will take nothing with them but one spare
shirt, one spare pair of shoes, a blanket, a bearskin, and provisions
for twelve days; Indians are not to amuse themselves by taking scalps
till the enemy is entirely defeated, since they can kill ten men in the
time required to scalp one.[304] Then Dieskau moved on, with nearly all
his force, to Carillon, or Ticonderoga, a promontory commanding both the
routes by which alone Johnson could advance, that of Wood Creek and that
of Lake George.

[Footnote 303: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 25 Sept. 1755_.]

[Footnote 304: _Livre d'Ordres, Aout, Sept. 1755_.]

The Indians allies were commanded by Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, the
officer who had received Washington on his embassy to Fort Le Boeuf.
These unmanageable warriors were a constant annoyance to Dieskau, being
a species of humanity quite new to him. "They drive us crazy," he says,
"from morning till night. There is no end to their demands. They have
already eaten five oxen and as many hogs, without counting the kegs of
brandy they have drunk. In short, one needs the patience of an angel to
get on with these devils; and yet one must always force himself to seem
pleased with them."[305]

[Footnote 305: _Dieskau a Vaudreuil, 1 Sept. 1755_.]

They would scarcely even go out as scouts. At last, however, on the
fourth of September, a reconnoitring party came in with a scalp and an
English prisoner caught near Fort Lyman. He was questioned under the
threat of being given to the Indians for torture if he did not tell the
truth; but, nothing daunted, he invented a patriotic falsehood; and
thinking to lure his captors into a trap, told them that the English
army had fallen back to Albany, leaving five hundred men at Fort Lyman,
which he represented as indefensible. Dieskau resolved on a rapid
movement to seize the place. At noon of the same day, leaving a part of
his force at Ticonderoga, he embarked the rest in canoes and advanced
along the narrow prolongation of Lake Champlain that stretched southward
through the wilderness to where the town of Whitehall now stands. He
soon came to a point where the lake dwindled to a mere canal, while two
mighty rocks, capped with stunted forests, faced each other from the
opposing banks. Here he left an officer named Roquemaure with a
detachment of troops, and again advanced along a belt of quiet water
traced through the midst of a deep marsh, green at that season with
sedge and water-weeds,