[452] These adventures were not always fortunate. On the
nineteenth of September Captain Hodges and fifty men were ambushed a few
miles from Fort William Henry by thrice their number of Canadians and
Indians, and only six escaped. Thus the record stands in the _Letter
Book_ of Winslow.[453] By visiting the encampments of Ticonderoga, one
may learn how the blow was struck.
[Footnote 450: _Minute of Lieutenant Kennedy's Scout. Winslow to Loudon,
20 Sept. 1756._]
[Footnote 451: _Winslow to Loudon, 16 Oct. 1756._]
[Footnote 452: _Report of a Scout to Ticonderoga, Oct. 1756_, signed
Israel Putnam.]
[Footnote 453: Compare Massachusetts Archives, LXXVI. 81.]
After much persuasion, much feasting, and much consumption of tobacco
and brandy, four hundred Indians, Christians from the Missions and
heathen from the far west, were persuaded to go on a grand war-party
with the Canadians. Of these last there were a hundred,--a wild crew,
bedecked and bedaubed like their Indian companions. Periere, an officer
of colony regulars, had nominal command of the whole; and among the
leaders of the Canadians was the famous bushfighter, Marin. Bougainville
was also of the party. In the evening of the sixteenth they all embarked
in canoes at the French advance-post commanded by Contrecoeur, near the
present steamboat-landing, passed in the gloom under the bare steeps of
Rogers Rock, paddled a few hours, landed on the west shore, and sent
scouts to reconnoitre.
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