Ticonderoga,--up-hill and down-hill for six miles, white houses and dark, churches and shops, and playing children and loungers, and mills, and rough banks and haggard woods, just like any other somewhat straggling country village. O no! O no! There are few like this. _I_ have seen no other. Churches and shops and all the paraphernalia of busy, bustling common life there may be, but we have no eyes for such. Yonder on the green high plain which we have already entered is a ****** guide-post, guiding you, not on to Canada, to New York, to Boston, but back into the dead century that lived so fiercely and lies so still. We stand on ground over-fought by hosts of heroes. Here rise still the breastworks, grass-grown and harmless now, behind which men awaited bravely the shock of furious onset, before which men rushed as bravely to duty and to death. Slowly we wind among the little squares of intrenchments, whose deadliest occupants now are peaceful cows and sheep, slowly among tall trees,--ghouls that thrust out their slimy, cold fingers everywhere, battening on horrid banquets,--nay, sorrowful trees, not so. Your gentle, verdant vigor nourishes no lust of blood. Rather you sprang in pity from the cold ashes at your feet, that every breeze quivering through your mournful leaves may harp a requiem for Polydorus.
Alighting at the landing-place we stroll up the hill and among the ruins of the old forts, and breast ourselves the surging battle-tide. For war is not to this generation what it has been. The rust of long disuse has been rubbed off by the iron hand of fate,--shall we not say, rather, by the good hand of our God upon us?--and the awful word stands forth once more, red-lettered and real. Marathon, Waterloo, Lexington, are no longer the conflict of numbers against numbers, nor merely of principles against principles, but of men against men. And as we stand on this silent hill, the prize of so many struggles, our own hearts swell with the hopes and sink with the fears that its green old bluffs have roused. Up from yon water-side came stealing the Green-Mountain Boys, with their grand and grandiloquent leader, and, at the very gateway where we stand, as tradition says, (et potius Dii numine firment,) he thundered out, with brave, barbaric voice, the imperious summons, "In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." No wonder the startled, half-dressed commander is confounded, and "the pretty face of his wife peering over his shoulder" is filled with terror. Well may such a motley crew frighten the fair Europeanne. "Frenchmen I know, and Indians I know, but who are ye?" Ah! Sir Commander, so bravely bedight, these are the men whom your parliamentary knights are to sweep with their brooms into the Atlantic Ocean. Bring on your besoms, fair gentlemen; yonder is Champlain, and a lake is as good to drown in as an ocean. Look at them, my lords, and look many times before you leap. They are a rough set, roughly clad, a stout-limbed, stout-hearted race, insubordinate, independent, irrepressible, almost as troublesome to their friends as to their foes; but there is good stock in them,--brain and brawn, and brain and brawn will yet carry the day over court and crown, in the name of the right, which shall overpower all things. We clamber down into arched passages, choked with debris, over floors tangled with briers, and join in the wild wassail of the bold outlaw, fired by his victorious career.
We clamber up the rugged sides and wind around to the headland.
Brilliant in the "morning-shine," exultant in the pride and pomp of splendid preparation, ardent for conquest and glory, Abercrombie sails down the lovely inland sea, to sail back dismantled and disgraced. The retrieving fleet of Amherst follows, as brilliant and as eager,--to gain the victory of numbers over valor, but to lose its fruit, as many a blood-bought prize has since been lost, snatched from the conqueror's hand by the traitor, doubt. But this is only the prologue of our great drama. Allen leaps first upon the scene, bucklered as no warrior ever was since the days of Homer or before. Then Arnold comes flying in, wresting laurels from defeat,--Arnold, who died too late. Here Schuyler walks up at night, his military soul vexed within him by the sleeping guards and the intermittent sentinels, his gentle soul harried by the rustic ill-breeding of his hinds, his magnanimous soul cruelly tortured by the machinations of jealousy and envy and evil-browed ambition. Yonder on the hill Burgoyne's battery threatens death, and Lincoln avenges us of Burgoyne. Let the curtain fall; a bloodier scene shall follow.
* * * * *
And then we re-embark on Lake Champlain, and all the summer afternoon sail down through phantom fleets, under the frowning ramparts of phantom forts, past grim rows of deathful-throated cannon, through serried hosts of warriors, with bright swords gleaming and strong arms lifted and stern lips parted; but from lips of man or throat of cannon comes no sound. A thousand oars strike through the leaping waves, but not a plash breaks on the listening ear. A thousand white sails swell to the coming breeze, that brings glad greeting from the inland hills, but nothing breaks the silences of time.
And of all beautiful things that could have been thought of or hoped for, what should come to crown our queen of days but a thunder-storm, a most real and vivid thunder-storm, marshalling up from the west its grand, cumulose clouds; black, jagged, bulging with impatient, prisoned thunder biding their time, sharp and fierce against the brilliant sky, spreading swiftly over the heavens, fusing into one great gray pall, dropping a dim curtain of rain between us and the land, closing down upon us a hollow hemisphere pierced with shafts of fire and deafening with unseen thunders, wresting us off from the friendly skies and shores, wrapping us into an awful solitude.
