old and fat to go afoot; but Johnson lent him a horse, which
he bestrode, and trotted to the head of the column, followed by two
hundred of his warriors as fast as they could grease, paint, and
befeather themselves.

[Footnote 308: _Wraxall to Lieutenant-Governor Delancey, 10 Sept. 1755_.
Wraxall was Johnson's aide-de-camp and secretary. The _Second Letter to
a Friend_ says twenty-one hundred whites and two hundred or three
hundred Indians. Blodget, who was also on the spot, sets the whites at
two thousand.]

[Footnote 309: _Letter to the Governors of the several Colonies, 9 Sept.
1755_.]

Captain Elisha Hawley was in his tent, finishing a letter which he had
just written to his brother Joseph; and these were the last words: "I am
this minute agoing out in company with five hundred men to see if we can
intercept 'em in their retreat, or find their canoes in the Drowned
Lands; and therefore must conclude this letter." He closed and directed
it; and in an hour received his death-wound.

It was soon after eight o'clock when Ephraim Williams left the camp with
his regiment, marched a little distance, and then waited for the rest of
the detachment under Lieutenant-Colonel Whiting. Thus Dieskau had full
time to lay his ambush. When Whiting came up, the whole moved on
together, so little conscious of danger that no scouts were thrown out
in front or flank; and, in full security, they entered the fatal snare.
Before they were completely involved in it, the sharp eye of old
Hendrick detected some sign of an enemy. At that instant, whether by
accident or design, a gun was fired from the bushes. It is said that
Dieskau's Iroquois, seeing Mohawks, their relatives, in the van, wished
to warn them of danger. If so, the warning came too late. The thickets
on the left blazed out a deadly fire, and the men fell by scores. In the
words of Dieskau, the head of the column "was doubled up like a pack of
cards." Hendrick's horse was shot down, and the chief was killed with a
bayonet as he tried to rise. Williams, seeing a rising ground on his
right, made for it, calling on his men to follow; but as he climbed the
slope, guns flashed from the bushes, and a shot through the brain laid
him dead. The men in the rear pressed forward to support their comrades,
when a hot fire was suddenly opened on them from the forest along their
right flank. Then there was a panic; some fled outright, and the whole
column recoiled. The van now became the re