Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/115

 DELAWARE COUNTY. 91 let, a distance of nine miles. The outlet of this lake proved a formidable obstacle to the egress of their loaded boats, as it was both too shallow and too narrow to permit them to pass out ; but the fertile genius of Clinton was equal to every emer- gency. He ordered a dam to be thrown across the outlet, and when the surface of the lake had risen about three feet, the dam was broken, and the boats passed down with apparent ease to the deeper waters of the Susquehanna. They joined the main army of Gren. Sullivan at Tioga Point, on the 22d of August. While awaiting the approach of Clinton, Gren. Sullivan had erected a fort, after whom it took its name, Fort Sullivan. Our limits, even were it directly our province, will not per- mit us to follow this army through the entire campaign. The subject has already been the theme of numerous historians,* orators and poets, who have bestowed upon it time and ardent labor — they wrote, too, when at least a precious few of the aged veterans of that campaign were yet survivors of its dangers and hardships — but who, now, after a lapse of over seventy years, have all been gathered to that bourne from which no traveller returns," — their tongues are lifeless and silent — their voices hushed — and the countenances which would glow with animation when they dwelt upon those scenes, and in imagi- nation, " Fought their battles o'er again," will be seen by us no more for ever. Suffice it to say that this expedition had the desired effect of crippling the future opera- tions of the Six Nations against the Colonies — but it did not entirely silence them, as will be seen from the perusal of the of Tryon County, Simms' History of Schoharie, Stine's Border Wars, Delafield's History of Seneca County, and also an interesting little volume entitled Sullivan's Revolutionary Campaign in Weston, N. Y.
 * For more particular accounts of Sullivan's campaign, see Annals