the ground sloped away like a natural glacis; while at the sides, and especially on the left, it was undulating and broken.  Over this whole space, to the distance of a musket-shot from the works, the forest was cut down, and the trees left lying where they fell among the stumps, with tops turned outwards, forming one vast abattis, which, as a Massachusetts officer says, looked like a forest laid flat by a hurricane.[623] But the most formidable obstruction was immediately along the front of the breastwork, where the ground was covered with heavy boughs, overlapping and interlaced, with sharpened points bristling into the face of the assailant like the quills of a porcupine.  As these works were all of wood, no vestige of them remains.  The earthworks now shown to tourists as the lines of Montcalm are of later construction; and though on the same ground, are not on the same plan.[624]

[Footnote 621:  Abercromby to Harrington, 12 July, 1758. “At least eight feet high.”  Rogers, Journals, 116.]

[Footnote 622:  A Swiss officer of the Royal Americans, writing on the 14th, says that there were two, and in some parts three, rows of loopholes.  See the letter in Pennsylvania Archives, III. 472.]

[Footnote 623:  Colonel Oliver Partridge to his Wife, 12 July, 1758.]

[Footnote 624:  A new line of works was begun four days after the battle, to replace the log breastwork.  Malartic, Journal.  Travaux faits a Carillon, 1758.]

Here, then, was a position which, if attacked in front with musketry alone, might be called impregnable.  But would Abercromby so attack it?  He had several alternatives.  He might attempt the flank and rear of his enemy by way of the low grounds on the right and left of the plateau, a movement which the precautions of Montcalm had made difficult, but not impossible.  Or, instead of leaving his artillery idle on the strand of Lake George, he might bring it to the front and batter the breastwork, which, though impervious to musketry, was worthless against heavy cannon.  Or he might do what Burgoyne did with success a score of years later, and plant a battery on the heights of Rattlesnake Hill, now called Mount Defiance, which commanded the position of the French, and whence the inside of their breastwork could be scoured with round-shot from end to end.  Or, while threatening the French front with a part of his army, he could march the rest a short distance through the woods on his left to the road which led from Ticonderoga to Crown Point, and which would soon have brought him to the place called Five-Mile Point, where Lake Champlain narrows to the width of an easy rifle-shot, and where a battery of field-pieces would have cut off all Montcalm’s supplies and closed his only way of retreat.  As the French were provisioned for but eight days, their position would thus have been desperate.  They plainly saw the danger; and Doreil declares that had the movement been made, their whole army must have surrendered.[625] Montcalm had done what he could; but the danger of his position was inevitable and extreme.  His hope lay in Abercromby; and it was a hope well founded.  The action of the English general answered the utmost wishes of his enemy.