Hence the lake stretched northward, like some broad
river, trenched between mountain ranges still leafless and gray. Then
they looked down on Ticonderoga, with the flag of the Bourbons, like a
flickering white speck, waving on its ramparts; and next on Crown Point
with its tower of stone. Lake Champlain now spread before them, widening
as they flew: on the left, the mountain wilderness of the Adirondacks,
like a stormy sea congealed; on the right, the long procession of the
Green Mountains; and, far beyond, on the dim verge of the eastern sky,
the White Mountains throned in savage solitude. They passed over the
bastioned square of Fort St. John, Fort Chambly guarding the rapids of
the Richelieu, and the broad belt of the St. Lawrence, with Montreal
seated on its bank. Here we leave them, to build their nests and hatch
their brood among the fens of the lonely North.
Montreal, the military heart of Canada, was in the past winter its
social centre also, where were gathered conspicuous representatives both
of Old France and of New; not men only, but women. It was a sparkling
fragment of the reign of Louis XV. dropped into the American wilderness.
Montcalm was here with his staff and his chief officers, now pondering
schemes of war, and now turning in thought to his beloved Chateau of
Candiac, his mother, children, and wife, to whom he sent letters with
every opportunity. To his wife he writes: "Think of me affectionately;
give love to my girls.
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