"[321]
Most of these gorgeous warriors were already on their way to Oswego,
their first destination.
[Footnote 321: _James Gray to John Gray, 11 July, 1755_.]
Shirley followed, embarking at the Dutch village of Schenectady, and
ascending the Mohawk with about two hundred of the so-called regulars in
bateaux. They passed Fort Johnson, the two villages of the Mohawks, and
the Palatine settlement of German Flats; left behind the last trace of
civilized man, rowed sixty miles through wilderness, and reached the
Great Carrying Place, which divided the waters that flow to the Hudson
from those that flow to Lake Ontario. Here now stands the city which the
classic zeal of its founders has adorned with the name of Rome. Then all
was swamp and forest, traversed by a track that led to Wood
Creek,--which is not to be confounded with the Wood Creek of Lake
Champlain. Thither the bateaux were dragged on sledges and launched on
the dark and tortuous stream, which, fed by a decoction of forest leaves
that oozed from the marshy shores, crept in shadow through depths of
foliage, with only a belt of illumined sky gleaming between the jagged
tree-tops. Tall and lean with straining towards the light, their rough,
gaunt stems trickling with perpetual damps, stood on either hand the
silent hosts of the forest. The skeletons of their dead, barkless,
blanched, and shattered, strewed the mudbanks and shallows; others lay
submerged, like bones of drowned mammoths, thrusting lank, white limbs
above the sullen water; and great trees, entire as yet, were flung by
age or storms athwart the current,--a bristling barricade of matted
boughs.
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