the Erie Canal, it is six miles: or seventy miles from Whitehall to Albany by canal route. This distance has frequently been given as fifty-one miles.
From the United States boundary line southward it is a distance of seven miles to Isle la Motte, which island is five and a half miles long by one and three quarters wide, with a light-house upon its northwest point. From the New York shore of Monti Bay, across the end of Isle la Motte to St. Albans, Vermont, is a distance of thirteen and a half miles. Two miles south of the island, on the west shore, is Point au Roche light; and two miles and three quarters south of it is Rocky Point, the terminus of Long Point. Next comes Treadwell Bay, three miles across; then two miles further on is Cumberland Head and its light-house. West from Cumberland, three miles across a large bay, is Plattsburgh, at the mouth of the Saranac River, a town of five thousand inhabitants. In this vicinity Commodore Macdonough fought the British fleet in 1814. These are historic waters, which have witnessed the scene of many a bloody struggle between French, English, and Indian adversaries. Off Cumberland Head, and dividing the lake, is Grand Isle, twelve miles in length and from three to four in width.
The village of Port Kent is near the mouth of the Ausable River, which flows out of the northern Adirondack country. A few miles from the lake is the natural wonder, the Ausable Chasm, which is nearly two miles in length. The river has worn a channel in the Potsdam sandstone formation to a depth, in places, of two hundred feet. Between high walls of rock the river is compressed in one place to ten feet in breadth, and dashes wildly over falls and rapids on its way to Lake Champlain. It is said to rival the famous Swiss Gorge du Triant.
Schuyler's Island, upon the shore of which we passed Tuesday night, is nearly in the latitude of Burlington, Vermont. The distance from Port Douglass on the west, to Burlington on the east side of Champlain, over an open expanse of water, is nine miles and three quarters. We breakfasted by starlight, and passed Ligonier's Point early in the day. One mile and a half east of it is the group of little islands called Four Brothers. The lake grew narrower as we rowed southward, until, after passing Port Henry Iron Works, and the high promontory of Crown Point, upon which are the ruins of the French Fort Frederic, built in 1731, it has a width of only two miles.
At eight o'clock p. m. we dropped anchor under the banks of Ticonderoga, not far from the outlet of Lake George. It is four miles by road between the two lakes. The stream which connects them can be ascended from Champlain about two miles to the Iron Works, the remainder of the river being filled with rapids.
A railroad now (1867) connects lakes George and Champlain, over which an easy portage can be made. The ruined walls of Fort Ticonderoga are near the railroad landing. A little south of this the lake grows so narrow as to resemble a river. At its southern end, twenty-four miles from Ticonderoga, is situated the town of Whitehall, where the Champlain and Hudson River Canal forms a junction with Lake Champlain. This long river-like termination of Champlain gave to the Indians the fancy of calling it Tisinondrosa– "the tail of the lake;" which in mouths inexperienced with the savage tongue became corrupted into Ticonderoga.
Wednesday broke upon us a glorious day. Proceeding three miles to Patterson's Landing, into the "tail of the lake," I left the Mayeta to explore on foot the shores of Lake George, promising Bodfish to join him at Whitehall when my work should be finished.
CHAPTER IV
FROM LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN TO THE HUDSON RIVER
THE DISCOVERY OF LAKE GEORGE BY FATHER JOGUES. – A PEDESTRIAN JOURNEY. – THE HERMIT OF THE NARROWS. – CONVENT OF ST. MARY'S OF THE LAKE. – THE PAULIST FATHERS. – CANAL-ROUTE FROM LAKE CHAMPLAIN TO ALBANY. – BODFISH RETURNS TO NEW JERSEY. – THE LITTLE FLEET IN ITS HAVEN OF REST.
IN the last chapter I gave, from seemingly good authority, the appellation of the narrow terminal water of the southern end of Lake Champlain, "the tail of the lake." Another authority, in describing Lake George, says: "The Indians named the lake, on account of the purity of its waters, Horican, or 'silvery water;' they also called it Canderi-oit, or 'the tail of the lake,' on account of its connecting with Lake Champlain." Cooper, in his "Last of the Mohicans," says: "It occurred to me that the French name of the lake was too complicated, the American too commonplace, and the Indian too unpronounceable for either to be used familiarly in a work of fiction." So he called it Horican.
History furnishes us with the following facts in regard to the discovery of the lake. While journeying up the St. Lawrence in a fleet of twelve canoes, on a mission to the friendly Huron aborigines, Father Isaac Jogues and his two friends, donnés of the mission, René Goupil and Guillaume Couture, with another Frenchman, were captured at the western end of Lake of St. Peter by a band of Iroquois, which was on a marauding expedition from the Mohawk River country, near what is now the city of Troy. In the panic caused by the sudden onslaught of the Iroquois, the unconverted portion of the thirty-six Huron allies of the Frenchmen fled into the woods, while the christianized portion defended the white men for a while. A reinforcement of the enemy soon scattered these also, but not until the Frenchmen and a few of the Hurons were made captive. This was on the 2d of August, 1642.
According to Francis Parkman, the author of "The Jesuits in North America," the savages tortured Jogues and his white companions, stripping off their clothing, tearing out their finger-nails with their teeth, and gnawing their fingers with the fury of beasts. The seventy Iroquois returned southward, following the River Richelieu, Lake Champlain, and Lake George, en route for the Mohawk towns. Meeting a war party of two hundred of their own nation on one of the islands of Champlain, the Indians formed two parallel lines between which the captives were forced to run for their lives, while the savages struck at them with thorny sticks and clubs. Father Jogues fell exhausted to the ground, bathed in his own blood, when fire was applied to his body. At night the young warriors tormented the poor captives by opening their wounds and tearing out their hair and beards. The day following this night of torture the Indians and their mangled captives reached the promontory of Ticonderoga, along the base of which flowed the limpid waters, the outlet of Lake George. Here the party made a portage through the primeval forests, carrying their canoes and cargoes on their backs, when suddenly there broke upon their view the dark blue waters of a beautiful lake, which Mr. Parkman thus eloquently describes:
"Like a fair naiad of the wilderness it slumbered between the guardian mountains that breathe from crag and forest the stern poetry of war. But all then was solitude; and the clang of trumpets, the roar of cannon, and the deadly crack of the rifle had never as yet awakened their angry echoes. Again the canoes were launched and the wild flotilla glided on its way, now in the shadow of the heights, now on the broad expanse, now among the devious channels of the Narrows, beset with woody islets where the hot air was redolent of the pine, the spruce, and the cedar, – till they neared that tragic shore where, in the following century, New England rustics baffled the soldiers of Dieskau, where Montcalm planted his batteries, where the red cross waved so long amid the smoke, and where, at length, the summer night was hideous with carnage, and an honored name was stained with a memory of blood. The Indians landed at or near the future site of Fort William Henry, left their canoes, and with their prisoners began their march for the nearest Mohawk town."
Father Jogues lived among his captors until the fall of 1643, when he escaped in a vessel from the Dutch settlement of Rensselaerswyck (Albany), to which place the Iroquois had gone to trade with the inhabitants. He arrived at the Jesuit college of Rennes, France, in a most destitute condition, on the 5th of January, 1644, where he was joyfully received and kindly cared for. When he appeared before Queen Anne of Austria, the woman who wore a diadem thought it a privilege to kiss his mutilated hands. In the Roman Catholic church a deformed or mutilated priest cannot say mass; he must be a perfect man in body and mind before the Lord. Father Jogues wished to return to his old missionary field; so, to restore to him his lost right of saying mass, the Pope granted his prayer by a special dispensation. In the spring of 1643 he returned to the St. Lawrence country to found a new mission, to be called the Mission of Martyrs. His Superior at Montreal ordered him to proceed to the
