[Footnote 494:  Bougainville, Journal.]

It remained to muster the Mission Indians settled in or near the limits of the colony; and it was to this end that Montcalm went to sing the war-song with the converts of the Two Mountains.  Rigaud, Bougainville, young Longueuil, and others were of the party; and when they landed, the Indians came down to the shore, their priests at their head, and greeted the General with a volley of musketry; then received him after dark in their grand council-lodge, where the circle of wild and savage visages, half seen in the dim light of a few candles, suggested to Bougainville a midnight conclave of wizards.  He acted vicariously the chief part in the ceremony.  “I sang the war-song in the name of M. de Montcalm, and was much applauded.  It was nothing but these words:  ’Let us trample the English under our feet,’ chanted over and over again, in cadence with the movements of the savages.”  Then came the war-feast, against which occasion Montcalm had caused three oxen to be roasted.[495] On the next day the party went to Caughnawaga, or Saut St. Louis, where the ceremony was repeated; and Bougainville, who again sang the war-song in the name of his commander, was requited by adoption into the clan of the Turtle.  Three more oxen were solemnly devoured, and with one voice the warriors took up the hatchet.

[Footnote 495:  Bougainville describes a ceremony in the Mission Church of the Two Mountains in which warriors and squaws sang in the choir.  Ninety-nine years after, in 1856, I was present at a similar ceremony on the same spot, and heard the descendants of the same warriors and squaws sing like their ancestors.  Great changes have since taken place at this old mission.]

Meanwhile troops, Canadians and Indians, were moving by detachments up Lake Champlain.  Fleets of bateaux and canoes followed each other day by day along the capricious lake, in calm or storm, sunshine or rain, till, towards the end of July, the whole force was gathered at Ticonderoga, the base of the intended movement.  Bourlamaque had been there since May with the battalions of Bearn and Royal Roussillon, finishing the fort, sending out war-parties, and trying to discover the force and designs of the English at Fort William Henry.

Ticonderoga is a high rocky promontory between Lake Champlain on the north and the mouth of the outlet of Lake George on the south.  Near its extremity and close to the fort were still encamped the two battalions under Bourlamaque, while bateaux and canoes were passing incessantly up the river of the outlet.  There were scarcely two miles of navigable water, at the end of which the stream fell foaming over a high ledge of rock that barred the way.  Here the French were building a saw-mill; and a wide space had been cleared to form an encampment defended on all sides by an abattis, within which stood the tents of the battalions of La Reine, La Sarre, Languedoc, and Guienne,