[Footnote 448:  Dumas a Vaudreuil, 9 Sept. 1756, cited in Bigot au Ministre, 6 Oct. 1756, and in Bougainville, Journal.]

Vaudreuil wrote singular despatches at this time to the minister at Versailles.  He takes credit to himself for the number of war-parties that his officers kept always at work, and fills page after page with details of the coups they had struck; how one brought in two English scalps, another three, another one, and another seven.  He owns that they committed frightful cruelties, mutilating and sometimes burning their prisoners; but he expresses no regret, and probably felt none, since he declares that the object of this murderous warfare was to punish the English till they longed for peace.[449]

[Footnote 449:  Depeches de Vaudreuil, 1756.]

The waters and mountains of Lake George, and not the western borders, were the chief centre of partisan war.  Ticonderoga was a hornet’s nest, pouring out swarms of savages to infest the highways and byways of the wilderness.  The English at Fort William Henry, having few Indians, could not retort in kind; but they kept their scouts and rangers in active movement.  What they most coveted was prisoners, as sources of information.  One Kennedy, a lieutenant of provincials, with five followers, white and red, made a march of rare audacity, passed all the French posts, took a scalp and two prisoners on the Richelieu, and burned a magazine of provisions between Montreal and St. John.  The party were near famishing on the way back; and Kennedy was brought into Fort William Henry in a state of temporary insanity from starvation.[450] Other provincial officers, Peabody, Hazen, Waterbury, and Miller, won a certain distinction in this adventurous service, though few were so conspicuous as the blunt and sturdy Israel Putnam.  Winslow writes in October that he has just returned from the best “scout” yet made, and that, being a man of strict truth, he may be entirely trusted.[451] Putnam had gone with six followers down Lake George in a whale-boat to a point on the east side, opposite the present village of Hague, hid the boat, crossed northeasterly to Lake Champlain, three miles from the French fort, climbed the mountain that overlooks it, and made a complete reconnoissance; then approached it, chased three Frenchmen, who escaped within the lines, climbed the mountain again, and moving westward along the ridge, made a minute survey of every outpost between the fort and Lake George.[452] These adventures were not always fortunate.  On the nineteenth of September Captain Hodges and fifty men were ambushed a few miles from Fort William Henry by thrice their number of Canadians and Indians, and only six escaped.  Thus the record stands in the Letter Book of Winslow.[453] By visiting the encampments of Ticonderoga, one may learn how the blow was struck.

[Footnote 450:  Minute of Lieutenant Kennedy’s Scout.  Winslow to Loudon, 20 Sept. 1756.]