communications from the St. Lawrence to New York.  The strength of Canada against attack by land lay in its remoteness, in the wilderness to be traversed before it was reached, and in the strength of the line of the St. Lawrence, with the fortified posts of Montreal and Quebec on its northern bank.  The wilderness, it is true, interposed its passive resistance to attacks from Canada as well as to attacks upon it; but when it had been traversed, there were to the southward no such strong natural positions confronting the assailant.  Attacks from the south fell upon the front, or at best upon the flank, of the line of the St. Lawrence.  Attacks from Canada took New York and its dependencies in the rear.

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These elements of natural strength, in the military conditions of the North, were impressed upon the minds of the Americans by the prolonged resistance of Canada to the greatly superior numbers of the British Colonists in the previous wars.  Regarded, therefore, as a base for attacks, of a kind with which they were painfully familiar, but to be undergone now under disadvantages of numbers and power never before experienced, it was desirable to gain possession of the St. Lawrence and its posts before they were strengthened and garrisoned.  At this outset of hostilities, the American insurgents, knowing clearly their own minds, possessed the advantage of the initiative over the British government, which still hesitated to use against those whom it styled rebels the preventive measures it would have taken at once against a recognised enemy.

Under these circumstances, in May, 1775, a body of two hundred and seventy Americans, led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, seized the posts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, which were inadequately garrisoned.  These are on the upper waters of Lake Champlain, where it is less than a third of a mile wide; Ticonderoga being on a peninsula formed by the lake and the inlet from Lake George, Crown Point on a promontory twelve miles lower down.[1] They were positions of recognised importance, and had been advanced posts of the British in previous wars.  A schooner being found there, Arnold, who had been a seaman, embarked in her and hurried to the foot of the lake.  The wind failed him when still thirty miles from St. John’s, another fortified post on the lower narrows, where the lake gradually tapers down to the Richelieu River, its outlet to the St. Lawrence.  Unable to advance otherwise, Arnold took to his boats with thirty men, pulled through the night, and at six o’clock on the following morning surprised the post, in which were only a sergeant and a dozen men.  He reaped the rewards of celerity.  The prisoners informed him that a considerable body of troops was expected from Canada, on its way to Ticonderoga; and this force in fact reached St. John’s on the next day.  When it arrived, Arnold was gone, having carried off a sloop which he found there and destroyed everything