OLD TICONDEROGA
A PICTURE OF THE PAST
From "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told
Tales"
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 bad 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.
THE END