Nathaniel Hawthorne
Old Ticonderoga
(A Picture of the Past)
From The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales
In returning once to New England, from a visit to Niagara, I found myself, one
summer's day, before noon, at Orwell, about forty miles from the southern
extremity of Lake Champlain, which has here the aspect of a river or a creek. We
were on the Vermont shore, with a ferry, of less than a mile wide, between us and
the town of Ti, in New-York.
On the bank of the lake, within ten yards of the water, stood a pretty white
tavern, with a piazza along its front. A wharf and one or two stores were close at
hand, and appeared to have a good run of trade, foreign as well as domestic; the
latter with Vermont farmers, the former with vessels plying between Whitehall and
the British dominions. Altogether, this was a pleasant and lively spot.
I delighted in it, among other reasons, on account of the continual succession of
travellers, who spent an idle quarter of an hour in waiting for the ferry-boat;
affording me just time enough to make their acquaintance, penetrate their
mysteries, and be rid of them without the risk of tediousness on either part.
The greatest attraction, in this vicinity, is the famous old fortress of
Ticonderoga; the remains of which are visible from the piazza of the tavern, on
a swell of land that shuts in the prospect of the lake. Those celebrated heights,
Mount Defiance and Mount Independence, familiar to all Americans in history, stand
too prominent not to be recognised, though neither of them precisely correspond to
the images excited by their names. In truth, the whole scene, except the interior
of the fortress, disappointed me. Mount Defiance, which one pictures as a steep,
lofty, and rugged hill, of most formidable aspect, frowning down with the grim
visage of a precipice on old Ticonderoga, is merely a long and wooded ridge; and
bore, at some former period, the gentle name of Sugar Hill. The brow is certainly
difficult to climb, and high enough to look into every corner of the fortress.
St. Clair's most probable reason, however, for neglecting to occupy it, was the
deficiency of troops to man the works already constructed, rather than the
supposed inacces sibility of Mount Defiance. It is singular that the French never
fortified this height, standing, as it does, in the quarter whence they must have
looked for the advance of a British army.
In my first view of the ruins I was favored with the scientific guidance of
a young lieutenant of engineers, recently from West Point, where he had gained
credit for great military genius. I saw nothing but confusion in what chiefly
interested him; straight lines and zig-zags, defence within defence, wall opposed
to wall, and ditch intersecting ditch; oblong squares of masonry below the surface
of the earth, and huge mounds, or turf-covered hills of stone, above it. On one of
these artificial hillocks, a pine tree has rooted itself, and grown tall and
strong, since the banner-staff was levelled. But where my unmilitary glance could
trace no regularity, the young lieutenant was perfectly at home. He fathomed the
meaning of every ditch, and formed an entire plan of the fortress from its half-
obliterated lines. His description of Ticonderoga would be as accurate as
a geometrical theorem, and as barren of the poetry that has clustered round its
decay. I viewed Ticonderoga as a place of ancient strength, in ruins for half
a century; where the flags of three nations had successively waved, and none waved
now; where armies had struggled, so long ago that the bones of the slain were
mouldered; where Peace had found a heritage in the forsaken haunts of War. Now the
young West Pointer, with his lectures on raveling, counterscarps, angles, and
covered ways, made it an affair of brick and mortar and hewn stone, arranged on
certain regular principles, having a good deal to do with mathematics but nothing
at all with poetry.
I should have been glad of a hoary veteran to totter by my side, and tell me,
perhaps, of the French garrisons and their Indian allies - of Abercrombie, Lord
Howe, and Amherst - of Ethan Allen's triumph and St. Clair's surrender. The old
soldier and the old fortress would be emblems of each other. His reminiscences,
though vivid as the image of Ticonderoga in the lake, would harmonize with the
gray influence of the scene. A survivor of the long-disbanded garrisons, though
but a private soldier, might have mustered his dead chiefs and comrades - some
from Westminster Abbey, and English churchyards, and battle-fields in Europe -
others from their graves here in America - others, not a few, who lie sleeping
round the fortress; he might have mustered them all, and bid them march through
the ruined gateway, turning their old historic faces on me as they passed. Next to
such a companion, the best is one's own fancy.
At another visit I was alone, and, after rambling all over the ramparts, sat
down to rest myself in one of the roofless barracks. These are old French
structures, and appear to have occupied three sides of a large area, now overgrown
with grass, nettles, and thistles. The one, in which I sat, was long and narrow,
as all the rest had been, with peaked gables. The exterior walls were nearly
entire, constructed of gray, flat, unpicked stones, the aged strength of which
promised long to resist the elements, if no other violence should precipitate
their fall. The roof, floors, partitions, and the rest of the wood-work, had
probably been burnt, except some bars of stanch old oak, which were blackened with
fire but still remained embedded into the window-sills and over the doors. There
were a few particles of plastering near the chimney, scratched with rude figures,
perhaps by a soldier's hand. A most luxuriant crop of weeds had sprung up within
the edifice and hid the scattered fragments of the wall. Grass and weeds grew in
the windows, and in all the crevices of the stone, climbing, step by step, till
a tuft of yellow flowers was waving on the highest peak of the gable. Some spicy
herb diffused a pleasant odor through the ruin. A verdant heap of vegetation had
covered the hearth of the second floor, clustering on the very spot where the huge
logs had mouldered to glowing coals, and flourished beneath the broad flue, which
had so often puffed the smoke over a circle of French or English soldiers. I felt
that there was no other token of decay so impressive as that bed of weeds in the
place of the back-log.
Here I sat, with those roofless walls about me, the clear sky over my head,
and the afternoon sunshine falling gently bright through the window-frames and
doorway. I heard the tinkling of a cow-bell, the twittering of birds, and the
pleasant hum of insects. Once a gay butterfly, with four gold-speckled wings, came
and fluttered about my head, then flew up and lighted on the highest tuft of
yellow flowers, and at last took wing across the lake. Next a bee buzzed through
the sunshine, and found much sweetness among the weeds. After watching him till he
went off to his distant hive, I closed my eyes on Ticonderoga in ruins, and cast a
dream-like glance over pictures of the past, and scenes of which this spot had
been the theatre.
At first, my fancy saw only the stern hills, lonely lakes, and venerable
woods. Not a tree, since their seeds were first scattered over the infant soil,
had felt the axe, but had grown up and flourished through its long generation,
had fallen beneath the weight of years, been buried in green moss, and nourished
the roots of others as gigantic. Hark! A light paddle dips into the lake, a birch
canoe glides round the point, and an Indian chief has passed, painted and feather-
crested, armed with a bow of hickory, a stone tomahawk, and flint-headed arrows.
But the ripple had hardly vanished from the water, when a white flag caught the
breeze, over a castle in the wilderness with frowning ramparts and a hundred
cannon. There stood a French chevalier, commandant of the fortress, paying court
to a copper-colored lady, the princess of the land, and winning her wild love by
the arts which had been successful with Parisian dames. A war-party of French and
Indians were issuing from the gate to lay waste some village of New England. Near
the fortress there was a group of dancers. The merry soldiers footing it with the
swart savage maids; deeper in the wood, some red men were growing frantic around a
keg of the fire-water; and elsewhere a Jesuit preached the faith of high
cathedrals beneath a canopy of forest boughs, and distributed crucifixes to be
worn beside English scalps.
I tried to make a series of pictures from the old French war, when fleets were
on the lake and armies in the woods, and especially of Abercrombie's disastrous
repulse, where thousands of lives were utterly thrown away; but being at a loss
how to order the battle, I chose an evening scene in the barracks after the
fortress had surrendered to Sir Jeffrey Amherst. What an immense fire blazes on
that hearth, gleaming on swords, bayonets, and musket barrels, and blending with
the hue of the scarlet coats till the whole barrackroom is quivering with ruddy
light! One soldier has thrown himself down to rest, after a deer-hunt, or perhaps
a long run through the woods, with Indians on his trail. Two stand up to wrestle,
and are on the point of coming to blows. A fifer plays a shrill accompaniment to
a drummer's song - a strain of light love and bloody war, with a chorus thundered
forth by twenty voices. Mean time a veteran in the corner is prosing about
Dettingen and Fontenoye, and relates camp-traditions of Marlborough's battles;
till his pipe, having been roguishly charged with gun-powder, makes a terrible
explosion under his nose. And now they all vanish in a puff of smoke from the
chimney.
I merely glanced at the ensuing twenty years, which glided peacefully over the
frontier fortress, till Ethan Allen's shout was heard, summoning it to surrender
"in the name of the great Jehovah and of the Continental Congress." Strange
allies! thought the British captain. Next came the hurried muster of the soldiers
of liberty, when the cannon of Burgoyne, pointing down upon their stronghold from
the brow of Mount Defiance, announced a new conqueror of Ticonderoga. No virgin
fortress, this! Forth rushed the motley throng from the barracks, one man wearing
the blue and buff of the Union, another the red coat of Britain, a third
a dragoon's jacket, and a fourth a cotton frock; here was a pair of leather
breeches, and striped trowsers there; a grenadier's cap on one head, and a broad-
brimmed hat, with a tall feather, on the next; this fellow shouldering a king's
arm, that might throw a bullet to Crown Point, and his comrade a long fowling
piece, admirable to shoot ducks on the lake. In the midst of the bustle, when the
fortress was all alive with its last warlike scene, the ringing of a bell on the
lake made me suddenly unclose my eyes, and behold only the gray and weedgrown
ruins. They were as peaceful in the sun as a warrior's grave.
Hastening to the rampart, I perceived that the signal had been given by the
steam-boat Franklin, which landed a passenger from Whitehall at the tavern, and
resumed its progress northward, to reach Canada the next morning. A sloop was
pursuing the same track; a little skiff had just crossed the ferry; while a scow,
laden with lumber, spread its huge square sail and went up the lake. The whole
country was a cultivated farm. Within musket shot of the ramparts lay the neat
villa of Mr. Pell, who, since the revolution, has become proprietor of a spot for
which France, England, and America have so often struggled. How forcibly the lapse
of time and change of circumstances came home to my apprehension! Banner would
never wave again, nor cannon roar, nor blood be shed, nor trumpet stir up
a soldier's heart, in this old fort of Ticonderoga. Tall trees had grown upon its
ramparts, since the last garrison marched out, to return no more, or only at some
dreamer's summons, gliding from the twilight past to vanish among realities.
1836
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