arrived at Crown Point with three thousand men, quite one third of them being veteran regulars from French battlefields. Dieskau was brave, experienced, and enterprising, and exemplifying his motto "Boldness Wins," not only proceeded to fortify Ticonderoga, but, believing that the new Fort Lyman was incomplete and feebly garrisoned, decided to march against it. With a flying corps of about three hundred regulars, eight hundred Canadians, and as many Indians, he moved up Lake Champlain and South Bay. Reaching the Hudson near the present site of Glens Falls on September 7, his Indians hesitated, or refused, to proceed further against Fort Lyman and its "big guns." Learning that General Johnson was at Lake George, and with contempt for the "provincial farmers," Dieskau promptly decided to make a sudden attack upon Johnson's camp the following morning.

When word of the proposed attack on Fort Lyman reached Johnson, he sent out a relieving force, on the morning of September 8, made up of one thousand colonials and two hundred Indians. When a few miles from Lake George, this force fell into an ambush planned by Dieskau, which resulted in severe loss. This engagement has passed into history and story as "The Bloody Morning Scout." Lieutenant Colonel Whiting conducted a hurried retreat, and with the aid of three

hundred men sent to his support from Johnson's camp checked, in a measure, Dieskau's furious pursuit.

The noise of this engagement warned the men of Johnson's camp; breastworks were hastily thrown up from logs, fallen trees, wagons, etc., and such cannon as they had were placed in position. Dieskau followed closely upon the heels of the retreating provincials with the intention of entering Johnson's camp, which he promptly and fiercely attacked, but was checked by the artillery and the firm stand of the colonists. The battle raged with varying promise during the afternoon. At last the colonials and their Indian allies, confident of victory, charged from their breast works against the French and forced them to a precipitate retreat, leaving most of their regulars dead on the field. General Johnson was wounded early in the action and General Lyman, a Yale tutor and lawyer, took charge of the command. Baron Dieskau was three times severely wounded, and left a prisoner on the field.

About three hundred Canadians and Indians fell back to the field of "The Bloody Morning Scout" to plunder and scalp the dead. While resting with their plunder on the margin of a stagnant forest pool seven miles from Glens Falls, they were surprised and most of them slain by a body of men sent out from Fort Lyman.

General Johnson estimated the French loss at more than five hundred. The colonials lost over two hundred and sixty, not counting Indian allies.

This is but a slight sketch of this "day of battles," memorable as the first considerable success against the French in America, as the most important battle fought up to that time on New York soil, and as the first encounter of the yeomanry of the New World with the disciplined troops and experienced officers of the Old. It was the test which developed that confidence which led the colonists to dare the great struggle of the Revolution.

On September 8, 1903, a monument, erected by the Society of the Colonial Wars in the State of New York, was unveiled and dedicated with elaborate and appropriate public ceremonies. The battlefield itself is now a State Park, secured by the influence of the New York State Historical Society.

chain: succession.

- endeavoring: trying..

surveyors : land measurers. Presque Isle (prěsk' el').comply: obey. - Duquesne (dükan').colonial troops: troops made up of men living in the American colonies. - ambush: a concealed place where some one is hidden. regulars: soldiers belonging to a standing army. - subsequently afterward. Dieskau (des'kau). - precipitate: hasty. memorable: worthy to be remembered. encounter: hostile meeting; contest. -yeomanry: common people, especially farmers.

The Islet.

The time I spent upon the island is still so horrible a thought to me, that I must pass it lightly over. In all the books I have read of people cast away, they had either their pockets full of tools, or a chest of things would be thrown upon the beach along with them, as if on purpose. My case was very different. I had nothing in my pockets but money and Alan's silver button; and being inland bred, I was as much short of knowledge as of means.

I knew indeed that shellfish were counted good to eat; and among the rocks of the isle I found a great plenty of limpets, which at first I could scarcely strike from their places, not knowing quickness to be needful. There were, besides, some of the little shells that we call buckies; I think periwinkle is the English name. these two I made my whole diet, devouring them cold and raw as I found them; and so hungry was I, that at first they seemed to me delicious.

Of

Perhaps they were out of season, or perhaps there was something wrong in the sea about my island. But at least I had no sooner eaten my first meal than I was seized with giddiness and retching, and lay for a long time no better than dead. A second trial of the same

food (indeed I had no other) did better with me, and revived my strength. But as long as I was on the island, I never knew what to expect when I had eaten; sometimes all was well, and sometimes I was thrown into a miserable sickness; nor could I ever distinguish what particular fish it was that hurt me.

All day it streamed rain; the island ran like a sop, there was no dry spot to be found; and when I lay down that night between two bowlders that made a kind of roof, my feet were in a bog.

The second day I crossed the island to all sides. There was no one part of it better than another; it was all desolate and rocky; nothing living on it but game birds, which I lacked the means to kill, and the gulls which haunted the outlying rocks in a prodigious number. But the creek, or strait, that cut off the isle from the mainland of the Ross, opened out on the north into a bay, and the bay again opened into the sound of Iona; and it was the neighborhood of this place that I chose to be my home; though if I had thought upon the very name of home in such a spot, I must have burst out weeping.

I had good reasons for my choice. There was in this part of the isle a little hut of a house like a pig's hut, where fishers used to sleep when they came there upon their business; but the turf roof of it had fallen entirely in; so that the hut was of no use to me, and gave me