"
The accounts of the French writers differ from each other, but agree in
placing the English force at from seventy to eighty, and their own much
higher. The principal report is that of _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 19
Avril, 1757_ (his second letter of this date). Bougainville, Montcalm,
Malartic, and Montreuil all speak of the affair, placing the English
loss much higher than is shown by the returns. The story, repeated in
most of the French narratives, that only three of the rangers reached
Fort William Henry, seems to have arisen from the fact that Stark with
two men went thither in advance of the rest. As regards the antecedents
of the combat, the French and English accounts agree.]
The effects of his wound and an attack of small-pox kept Rogers quiet
for a time. Meanwhile the winter dragged slowly away, and the ice of
Lake George, cracking with change of temperature, uttered its strange
cry of agony, heralding that dismal season when winter begins to relax
its grip, but spring still holds aloof; when the sap stirs in the
sugar-maples, but the buds refuse to swell, and even the catkins of the
willows will not burst their brown integuments; when the forest is
patched with snow, though on its sunny slopes one hears in the stillness
the whisper of trickling waters that ooze from the half-thawed soil and
saturated beds of fallen leaves; when clouds hang low on the darkened
mountains, and cold mists entangle themselves in the tops of the pines;
now a dull rain, now a sharp morning frost, and now a storm of snow
powdering the waste, and wrapping it again in the pall of winter.
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