Page:The last of the Mohicans (1826 Volume 2).djvu/66

 useless. The carelessness engendered by these usages, descended even to the war of the revolution, and lost the states the important fortress of Ticonderoga, opening a way for the army of Burgoyne, into what was then the bosom of the country. We look back at this ignorance, or infatuation, which ever it may be called, with astonishment, knowing that the neglect of an eminence, whose difficulties, like those of Mount Defiance, had been so greatly exaggerated, would, at the present time, prove fatal to the reputation of the engineer who had planned the works at their base, or to that of the general, whose lot it was to defend them.

The tourist, the valetudinarian, or the amateur of the beauties of nature, who, in the train of his four-in-hand, now rolls through the scenes we have attempted to describe, in quest of information, health, or pleasure, or floats steadily towards his object on those artificial waters, which have sprung up under the administration of a statesman, who has dared to stake his political character on the hazardous issue,