Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/35

 Robert Rogers, the Ranger.

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��coolness, readiness of resource in ex- tremities, together with intuitive knowl- edge of the enemy's wiles, supple- mented with a passable knowledge of French and Indian speech, you will have a tolerable portrait of Captain Robert Rogers at the beginning of our Seven Year's war.*

He received his first Captain's com- mission in the early part of 1755, and was employed by the New Hampshire governm^iit in building a fort at the mouth of the Ammonoosuc River and in guarding its Northern and Western frontiers until July, when he was ordered to Albany to join the army of Major General Johnson. His first ser- vice there was in furnishing escort, with a company of one hundred men, to a provision train from Albany to Fort Ed- ward. From this latter point he was afterwards repeatedly despatched, with smaller bodies of men, up the Hudson River and down Lake George and Lake Champlain to reconnoiter the French forts. Some of these expeditions ex- tended as far north as Crown Point and were enlivened with sharp skirmishes. He was absent up the Hudson upon one of these when the French were de- feated at the battle of Lake George and Baron Dieskan was made prisoner.

The efficiency of the campaign of the next year (1756), which contemplated the taking of Crown Point, Niagara and Fort Du Quesne, was seriously impaired by the repeated changes of Com- mander-in-Chief; Major General Shir- ley being superceded in June by General Abercrombie while he, about a month later, yielded the com-

published in London in 1776. He is represented as a tall, strong man, dressed in the costume of a Ranger, with a powder-horn strung at his side, a gun resting in the hollow of his arm, and a countenance by no means preposessing. Behind him, at a little distance, stand his Indian followers." — [Parkman's Conspiracy of Pon- tiachj vol. I, p. 164,
 * " An engraved full-length portrait of Rogers was

��mand to the inefficient Lord Lon- down. The only occurrences of par- ticular note during this campaign were the capture of our forts at Oswego by General Montcalm and the formal dec- larations of war by the two belligents.

Rogers and his men were stationed at Fort William Henrys, and made repeated visits to Ticonderoga and Crown Point to ascertain the power of the enemy and to annoy him as they had opportun- ity. They went down Lake George, sometimes by land upon its shores, and sometimes by water and in boats. In the winter their land marches were fre- quently upon snow-shoes, and their boats were exchanged for skates. On such occasions each Ranger was gener- ally his own commissary and carried his own suppKes.

In his journal for this year (1756) Rogers notes thirteen of these expedi- tions as worthy of record. The first was down Lake George on the ice, in January, with seventeen men, resulting in the capture of two prisoners and two sledges laden with provisions.

The second was made in February with a party of fifty men to ascertain the strength and operations of the French at Crown Point. Having captured one prisoner at a little village near by the fort, they were discovered and obliged to retire before the sallying troops of the garrison. With very marked sang froid he closes his account of this re- connoissance by saying : " We employed ourselves while we dared stay in setting fire to the houses and bams in the vil- lage, with which were consumed large quantities of wheat, and other grain \ we also killed about fifty cattle and then retired, leaving the whole village in flames."

There often appears a ludicrous kind of honesty in the simple narratives of this journal. He occasionally seized

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