The vicinity of the mountain-girdled, island-dotted, tourist-inviting Lake George has perhaps been the scene of more of the romance of war than any other locality that could be named.  Fort Ticonderoga, on the ridge between that beautiful sheet of water and Lake Champlain, is a point vital with stirring memories, among which the striking exploit of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain boys is of imperishable interest.  Fort William Henry, at the lower end of Lake George, is memorable as the locality of one of the most nerve-shaking examples of Indian treachery and barbarity, a scene which Cooper’s fruitful pen has brought well within the kingdom of romance.  The history of the whole vicinity, in short, is laden with picturesque incident, and the details of fact never approached those of romantic fiction more closely than in the annals of this interesting region.

Israel Putnam, best known to us as one of the most daring heroes of the Revolution, began here his career, in the French and Indian War, as scout and ranger, and of no American frontiersman can a more exciting series of adventures be told.  Some of these adventures it is our purpose here to give.

After the Fort William Henry massacre, the American forces were concentrated in Fort Edward, on the head-waters of the Hudson; Putnam, with his corps of Rangers, occupying an outpost station, on a small island near the fort.  Fearing a hostile visit from the victorious French, the commander, General Lyman, made all haste to strengthen his defences, sending a party of a hundred and fifty men into the neighboring forest to cut timber for that purpose.  Captain Little, with fifty British regulars, was deputized to protect these men at their labors.  This supporting party was posted on a narrow ridge leading to the fort, with a morass on one side, a creek on the other, and the forest in front.

One morning, at daybreak, a sentinel who stood on the edge of the morass, overlooking the dense thicket which filled its depths, was surprised at what seemed to him, in the hazy light, a flight of strange birds coming from the leafy hollow.  One after another of these winged objects passed over his head.  After he had observed them a moment or two, he saw one of them strike a neighboring tree, and cling quivering to its trunk.  A glance was enough for the drowsy sentinel.  He was suddenly wide awake, and his musket and voice rang instant alarm, for the bird which he had seen was a winged Indian arrow.  He had been made a target for ambushed savages, eager to pick him off without alarming the party which he guarded.

A large force of Indians had crept into the morass during the night, with the hope of cutting off the laborers and the party of support.  The sentinel’s alarm shot unmasked them.  Whooping like discovered fiends, they flew from their covert upon the unarmed laborers, shot and tomahawked those within reach, and sent the others in panic flight to the fort.  Captain Little and his band flew to the rescue, and checked the pursuit of the savages by hasty volleys, but soon found themselves so pressed by superior numbers that the whole party was in danger of being surrounded and slain.