Old Ticonderoga

A Picture of The Past

by Nathaniel Hawthorne




The greatest attraction, in this vicinity, is the famous old fortress
of Ticonderoga, the remains of which are visible from the piazza of the
tavern, on a swell of land that shuts in the prospect of the lake.
Those celebrated heights, Mount Defiance and Mount Independence,
familiar to all Americans in history, stand too prominent not to be
recognized, though neither of them precisely corresponds to the images
excited by their names. In truth, the whole scene, except the interior
of the fortress, disappointed me. Mount Defiance, which one pictures as
a steep, lofty, and rugged hill, of most formidable aspect, frowning
down with the grim visage of a precipice on old Ticonderoga, is merely
a long and wooded ridge; and bore, at some former period, the gentle
name of Sugar Hill. The brow is certainly difficult to climb, and high
enough to look into every corner of the fortress. St. Clair’s most
probable reason, however, for neglecting to occupy it, was the
deficiency of troops to man the works already constructed, rather than
the supposed inaccessibility of Mount Defiance. It is singular that the
French never fortified this height, standing, as it does, in the
quarter whence they must have looked for the advance of a British army.

In my first view of the ruins, I was favored with the scientific
guidance of a young lieutenant of engineers, recently from West Point,
where he had gained credit for great military genius. I saw nothing but
confusion in what chiefly interested him; straight lines and zigzags,
defence within defence, wall opposed to wall, and ditch intersecting
ditch; oblong squares of masonry below the surface of the earth, and
huge mounds, or turf-covered hills of stone, above it. On one of these
artificial hillocks, a pine-tree has rooted itself, and grown tall and
strong, since the banner-staff was levelled. But where my unmilitary
glance could trace no regularity, the young lieutenant was perfectly at
home. He fathomed the meaning of every ditch, and formed an entire plan
of the fortress from its half-obliterated lines. His description of
Ticonderoga would be as accurate as a geometrical theorem, and as
barren of the poetry that has clustered round its decay. I viewed
Ticonderoga as a place of ancient strength, in ruins for half a
century: where the flags of three nations had successively waved, and
none waved now; where armies had struggled, so long ago that the bones
of the slain were mouldered; where Peace had found a heritage in the
forsaken haunts of War. Now the young West-Pointer, with his lectures
on ravelins, counterscarps, angles, and covered ways, made it an affair
of brick and mortar and hewn stone, arranged on certain regular
principles, having a good deal to do with mathematics, but nothing at
all with poetry.

I should have been glad of a hoary veteran to totter by my side, and
tell me, perhaps, of the French garrisons and their Indian allies,—of
Abercrombie, Lord Howe, and Amherst,—of Ethan Allen’s triumph and St.
Clair’s surrender. The old soldier and the old fortress would be
emblems of each other. His reminiscences, though vivid as the image of
Ticonderoga in the lake, would harmonize with the gray influence of the
scene. A survivor of the long-disbanded garrisons, though but a private
soldier, might have mustered his dead chiefs and comrades,—some from
Westminster Abbey, and English churchyards, and battle-fields in
Europe,—others from their graves here in America,—others, not a few,
who lie sleeping round the fortress; he might have mustered them all,
and bid them march through the ruined gateway, turning their old
historic faces on me, as they passed. Next to such a companion, the
best is one’s own fancy.

At another visit I was alone, and, after rambling all over the
ramparts, sat down to rest myself in one of the roofless barracks.
These are old French structures, and appear to have occupied three
sides of a large area, now overgrown with grass, nettles, and thistles.
The one in which I sat was long and narrow, as all the rest had been,
with peaked gables. The exterior walls were nearly entire, constructed
of gray, flat, unpicked stones, the aged strength of which promised
long to resist the elements, if no other violence should precipitate
their fall.—The roof, floors, partitions, and the rest of the wood-work
had probably been burnt, except some bars of stanch old oak, which were
blackened with fire, but still remained imbedded into the window-sills
and over the doors. There were a few particles of plastering near the
chimney, scratched with rude figures, perhaps by a soldier’s hand. A
most luxuriant crop of weeds had sprung up within the edifice, and hid
the scattered fragments of the wall. Grass and weeds grew in the
windows, and in all the crevices of the stone, climbing, step by step,
till a tuft of yellow flowers was waving on the highest peak of the
gable. Some spicy herb diffused a pleasant odor through the ruin. A
verdant heap of vegetation had covered the hearth of the second floor,
clustering on the very spot where the huge logs had mouldered to
glowing coals, and flourished beneath the broad flue, which had so
often puffed the smoke over a circle of French or English soldiers. I
felt that there was no other token of decay so impressive as that bed
of weeds in the place of the backlog.

Here I sat, with those roofless walls about me, the clear sky over my
head, and the afternoon sunshine falling gently bright through the
window-frames and doorway. I heard the tinkling of a cow-bell, the
twittering of birds, and the pleasant hum of insects. Once a gay
butterfly, with four gold-speckled wings, came and fluttered about my
head, then flew up and lighted on the highest tuft of yellow flowers,
and at last took wing across the lake. Next a bee buzzed through the
sunshine, and found much sweetness among the weeds. After watching him
till he went off to his distant hive, I closed my eyes on Ticonderoga
in ruins, and cast a dream-like glance over pictures of the past, and
scenes of which this spot had been the theatre.

At first, my fancy saw only the stern hills, lonely lakes, and
venerable woods. Not a tree, since their seeds were first scattered
over the infant soil, had felt the axe, but had grown up and flourished
through its long generation, had fallen beneath the weight of years,
been buried in green moss, and nourished the roots of others as
gigantic. Hark! A light paddle dips into the lake, a birch canoe glides
round the point, and an Indian chief has passed, painted and
feather-crested, armed with a bow of hickory, a stone tomahawk, and
flint-headed arrows. But the ripple had hardly vanished from the water,
when a white flag caught the breeze, over a castle in the wilderness,
with frowning ramparts and a hundred cannon. There stood a French
chevalier, commandant of the fortress, paying court to a copper-colored
lady, the princess of the land, and winning her wild love by the arts
which had been successful with Parisian dames. A war-party of French
and Indians were issuing from the gate to lay waste some village of New
England. Near the fortress there was a group of dancers. The merry
soldiers footing it with the swart savage maids; deeper in the wood,
some red men were growing frantic around a keg of the fire-water; and
elsewhere a Jesuit preached the faith of high cathedrals beneath a
canopy of forest boughs, and distributed crucifixes to be worn beside
English scalps.

I tried to make a series of pictures from the old French war, when
fleets were on the lake and armies in the woods, and especially of
Abercrombie’s disastrous repulse, where thousands of lives were utterly
thrown away; but, being at a loss how to order the battle, I chose an
evening scene in the barracks, after the fortress had surrendered to
Sir Jeffrey Amherst. What an immense fire blazes on that hearth,
gleaming on swords, bayonets, and musket-barrels, and blending with the
hue of the scarlet coats till the whole barrack-room is quivering with
ruddy light! One soldier has thrown himself down to rest, after a
deer-hunt, or perhaps a long run through the woods with Indians on his
trail. Two stand up to wrestle, and are on the point of coming to
blows. A fifer plays a shrill accompaniment to a drummer’s song,—a
strain of light love and bloody war, with a chorus thundered forth by
twenty voices. Meantime, a veteran in the corner is prosing about
Dettingen and Fontenoy, and relates camp-traditions of Marlborough’s
battles, till his pipe, having been roguishly charged with gunpowder,
makes a terrible explosion under his nose. And now they all vanish in a
puff of smoke from the chimney.

I merely glanced at the ensuing twenty years, which glided peacefully
over the frontier fortress, till Ethan Allen’s shout was heard,
summoning it to surrender “in the name of the great Jehovah and of the
Continental Congress.” Strange allies! thought the British captain.
Next came the hurried muster of the soldiers of liberty, when the
cannon of Burgoyne, pointing down upon their stronghold from the brow
of Mount Defiance, announced a new conqueror of Ticonderoga. No virgin
fortress, this! Forth rushed the motley throng from the barracks, one
man wearing the blue and buff of the Union, another the red coat of
Britain, a third a dragoon’s jacket, and a fourth a cotton frock; here
was a pair of leather breeches, and striped trousers there; a
grenadier’s cap on one head, and a broad-brimmed hat, with a tall
feather, on the next; this fellow shouldering a king’s arm, that might
throw a bullet to Crown Point, and his comrade a long fowling-piece,
admirable to shoot ducks on the lake. In the midst of the bustle, when
the fortress was all alive with its last warlike scene, the ringing of
a bell on the lake made me suddenly unclose my eyes, and behold only
the gray and weed-grown ruins. They were as peaceful in the sun as a
warrior’s grave.

Hastening to the rampart, I perceived that the signal had been given by
the steamboat Franklin, which landed a passenger from Whitehall at the
tavern, and resumed its progress northward, to reach Canada the next
morning. A sloop was pursuing the same track; a little skiff had just
crossed the ferry; while a scow, laden with lumber, spread its huge
square sail, and went up the lake. The whole country was a cultivated
farm. Within musket-shot of the ramparts lay the neat villa of Mr.
Pell, who, since the Revolution, has become proprietor of a spot for
which France, England, and America have so often struggled. How
forcibly the lapse of time and change of circumstances came home to my
apprehension! Banner would never wave again, nor cannon roar, nor blood
be shed, nor trumpet stir up a soldier’s heart, in this old fort of
Ticonderoga. Tall trees have grown upon its ramparts, since the last
garrison marched out, to return no more, or only at some dreamer’s
summons, gliding from the twilight past to vanish among realities.