all commanded by Levis.  Above the cascade the stream circled through the forest in a series of beautiful rapids, and from the camp of Levis a road a mile and a half long had been cut to the navigable water above.  At the end of this road there was another fortified camp, formed of colony regulars, Canadians, and Indians, under Rigaud.  It was scarcely a mile farther to Lake George, where on the western side there was an outpost, chiefly of Canadians and Indians; while advanced parties were stationed at Bald Mountain, now called Rogers Rock, and elsewhere on the lake, to watch the movements of the English.  The various encampments just mentioned were ranged along a valley extending four miles from Lake Champlain to Lake George, and bordered by mountains wooded to the top.

Here was gathered a martial population of eight thousand men, including the brightest civilization and the darkest barbarism:  from the scholar-soldier Montcalm and his no less accomplished aide-de-camp; from Levis, conspicuous for graces of person; from a throng of courtly young officers, who would have seemed out of place in that wilderness had they not done their work so well in it; from these to the foulest man eating savage of the uttermost northwest.

Of Indian allies there were nearly two thousand.  One of their tribes, the Iowas, spoke a language which no interpreter understood; and they all bivouacked where they saw fit:  for no man could control them.  “I see no difference,” says Bougainville, “in the dress, ornaments, dances, and songs of the various western nations.  They go naked, excepting a strip of cloth passed through a belt, and paint themselves black, red, blue, and other colors.  Their heads are shaved and adorned with bunches of feathers, and they wear rings of brass wire in their ears.  They wear beaver-skin blankets, and carry lances, bows and arrows, and quivers made of the skins of beasts.  For the rest they are straight, well made, and generally very tall.  Their religion is brute paganism.  I will say it once for all, one must be the slave of these savages, listen to them day and night, in council and in private, whenever the fancy takes them, or whenever a dream, a fit of the vapors, or their perpetual craving for brandy, gets possession of them; besides which they are always wanting something for their equipment, arms, or toilet, and the general of the army must give written orders for the smallest trifle,—­an eternal, wearisome detail, of which one has no idea in Europe.”

It was not easy to keep them fed.  Rations would be served to them for a week; they would consume them in three days, and come for more.  On one occasion they took the matter into their own hands, and butchered and devoured eighteen head of cattle intended for the troops; nor did any officer dare oppose this “St. Bartholomew of the oxen,” as Bougainville calls it.  “Their paradise is to be drunk,” says the young officer.  Their paradise was rather a hell; for sometimes, when mad with brandy, they grappled and tore each other with their teeth like wolves.  They were continually “making medicine,” that is, consulting the Manitou, to whom they hung up offerings, sometimes a dead dog, and sometimes the belt-cloth which formed their only garment.