down on the long procession of canoes.[306] As they neared the site of Whitehall, a passage opened on the right, the entrance to a sheet of lonely water slumbering in the shadow of woody mountains, and forming the lake then, as now, called South Bay.  They advanced to its head, landed where a small stream enters it, left the canoes under a guard, and began their march through the forest.  They counted in all two hundred and sixteen regulars of the battalions of Languedoc and La Reine, six hundred and eighty-four Canadians, and above six hundred Indians.[307] Every officer and man carried provisions for eight days in his knapsack.  They encamped at night by a brook, and in the morning, after hearing Mass, marched again.  The evening of the next day brought them near the road that led to Lake George.  Fort Lyman was but three miles distant.  A man on horseback galloped by; it was Adams, Johnson’s unfortunate messenger.  The Indians shot him, and found the letter in his pocket.  Soon after, ten or twelve wagons appeared in charge of mutinous drivers, who had left the English camp without orders.  Several of them were shot, two were taken, and the rest ran off.  The two captives declared that, contrary to the assertion of the prisoner at Ticonderoga, a large force lay encamped at the lake.  The Indians now held a council, and presently gave out that they would not attack the fort, which they thought well supplied with cannon, but that they were willing to attack the camp at Lake George.  Remonstrance was lost upon them.  Dieskau was not young, but he was daring to rashness, and inflamed to emulation by the victory over Braddock.  The enemy were reported greatly to outnumber him; but his Canadian advisers had assured him that the English colony militia were the worst troops on the face of the earth.  “The more there are,” he said to the Canadians and Indians, “the more we shall kill;” and in the morning the order was given to march for the lake.

[Footnote 306:  I passed this way three weeks ago.  There are some points where the scene is not much changed since Dieskau saw it.]

[Footnote 307:  Memoire sur l’Affaire du 8 Septembre.]

They moved rapidly on through the waste of pines, and soon entered the rugged valley that led to Johnson’s camp.  On their right was a gorge where, shadowed in bushes, gurgled a gloomy brook; and beyond rose the cliffs that buttressed the rocky heights of French Mountain, seen by glimpses between the boughs.  On their left rose gradually the lower slopes of West Mountain.  All was rock, thicket, and forest; there was no open space but the road along which the regulars marched, while the Canadians and Indians pushed their way through the woods in such order as the broken ground would permit.