Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/157

Rh  He might cross the short portage to Lake George, pass up that beautiful lake to its head, and make a portage of twelve miles to Fort Edward, on the Hudson. This was the usual and the easier way. Or he might follow the narrow upper end of Lake Champlain to the site of the modern Whitehall, in the old district called Skenesborough, and make a longer portage to Fort Edward by Fort Anne. From Fort Edward the way lay down the Hudson to Albany and New York. The general direction of the route is north and south, and remarkably straight, considering that it follows the great natural features of the country. The whole distance from Lake St. Pierre to New York is a little more than three hundred and fifty miles. Whitehall lies about midway between them, and Ticonderoga some twenty miles north of Whitehall.

No point between the St. Lawrence and New York was considered more important from a military point of view than Fort Ticonderoga. This was so placed as to protect the portage from Lake Champlain to Lake George, and to command the passage to the southern extremity of the former lake. The fort was built by the French in 1755, and called by them Fort Carillon. It was improved by Montcalm in the following year, and in 1758 withstood the attack of an English army of fifteen thousand men, the largest body of Europeans which had yet been assembled under arms in America. General Abercrombie, who commanded the English army, so mismanaged his attack that his force was repulsed with great slaughter.

In 1759 the French abandoned Fort Carillon on the