Chapter III: Part 3

CROWN POINT

LAKE CHAMPLAIN--NEW YORK

It would be hard, gazing upon Crown Point to-day, to realize the storms and terrors it let loose upon the English colonists not quite two hundred years ago. Girt by the smiling waters of one of America’s most beautiful lakes, overtopped by a verdant mountain, and gazing out upon green fields in the shade of majestic woodlands, all of the atmosphere of the place is one of peace and aloofness from the pain of human suffering. Yet the name “Crown Point” was a sinister thing in the early days of the English colonists, particularly in the northern provinces. The New England matron putting to bed her infant Stephen Brewster or little Praise-the-Lord Jones, or the Dutch vrouw in the country round about Albany with her little Van Rensselaer Tasselwitch, had but to utter this dreadful name, “Crown Point,” to bring her child into the most docile state of apprehension. From Crown Point went forth the scalping parties of French, Indian and half-breeds, which preyed upon the borders of the English colonies, carrying wrack and horror wherever they went. A glad and beautiful place, it nourished in its heart an evil spirit.

The Ruined Barracks

CROWN POINT, N. Y., IN DEAD OF WINTER]

The settlement of the Crown Point district by the French began soon after the opening of the eighteenth century. The beautiful lake which bears the name of its discoverer had been known in France for more than a century, and the country which lay between Lake Champlain and Lake Ontario--all that wilderness stretch of northern New York of to-day--had been charted with a fair degree of exactness, as well. The riches of the region were well sensed. Accordingly, a large and important province was planned by the French political geographers whose eastern boundary should be the Connecticut and whose western boundary should be Lake Ontario. North was the St. Lawrence River, and the southern confine was rather misty, except that it was determined that it should be all that could be kept from the English. The metropolis and capital of this fine project was to be a place situated at that peculiar bend in Lake Champlain where there was a projecting tongue of land, making a fine site for settlement, fortification and development. In other words, it was to be Crown Point, or Pointe de Couronne, as the French had it. A body of settlers was sent over about 1729, and in 1731 a fortification was commenced at the tip of the Crown Point peninsula which was named Fort Saint Frederic. The remains of this fortification are barely visible on the lake side of the point to-day near the Champlain Memorial light-house. And now a few words as to the geography of this part of Lake Champlain.

The lake, as all know, is a long, narrow tongue of water. About mid-way down it is constricted to even more than its usual slender width (“slender” as proportioned to the length) and the water is carried off at a sharp angle to the east. Just before the constriction, however, there is a protuberance, and on the west shore of this protuberance, or bay, there stands to-day the thriving little foundry town of Port Henry. Directly across the water from Port Henry, and at the point where the lake makes a sharp bend to the east, is a long, narrow point of land, and this is Crown Point. Crown Point has water on two sides of it. Though only a short distance from Port Henry by boat, it is quite a long distance by land, for, then, one must drive down to the base of the peninsula and work out to the point along the five-mile extent of the peninsula. The lake on the east side of Crown Point peninsula is so narrow that a cannon could easily fire across it. Behind Port Henry, that is, on the west side of the lake, is a precipitous mountain-side. The Point, therefore, was well protected in the days when cannon were with difficulty to be found in America and when they could not be transported easily through the wilderness of the New World. It could only be approached by water or by the long, narrow strip of land which joined it with the mainland, and either one of these approaches it could master very easily.

The first fort on Crown Point, Fort Saint Frederic, was a little five-pointed star-shaped fort. Though small in size, it played a far larger part in events than the mighty successor which the years brought and which we shall presently come to. Fort Saint Frederic was for twenty-five years the only French stronghold in this part of the world. In 1756 Ticonderoga was begun. In the council-rooms of old Saint Frederic what strange visitors might have been seen, what bizarre juxtapositions of Old World and New, of sophistication and savagery! During all of its life the little fort was a rendezvous for Indians. Here, too, the Baron Dieskau made himself at home before setting out on the expedition, unfortunate for himself, against Johnson on Lake George. Here might have been seen Montcalm and other of the mightiest and craftiest warriors of old France in the new.

Except as a centre for Indians and a council hall for white and red, the little fort did not ever take part in fighting. When the English finally advanced in force against the strongholds on Lake Champlain, Ticonderoga was the point which bore the brunt of the onslaughts. First, Johnson came against these two hornet nests of French and Indians and accomplished little. Then Abercrombie made his futile and disgraceful try (“Mother Nabercrombie” he was long afterward known in the colonies). Finally the two forts fell before the large force which Amherst, in 1757, brought against them and as a result of the need of men at Quebec which had depleted their strength beyond the power of resistance. Fort Saint Frederic, like Ticonderoga, was deserted without a shot being fired, though its departing commander tried to destroy it by fusing the magazines.

Under the British the old French fort was dismantled and allowed to fall into decay. So well did the situation of Crown Point appeal to the British, however, as a place of fortification and so important was a hold upon Lake Champlain deemed, that the British began the construction of a massive fortress, on the most approved model, which was completed as far as it was ever carried within the course of a few years after Amherst’s occupation of the point and which cost ten millions of dollars. This is an outlay which would be large even to-day. The jagged ruins of the walls of this fort, which never fired a shot in anger, are what one sees now on Crown Point when paying the old place a visit.

When Ethan Allen took Ticonderoga with his Green Mountain boys, Crown Point also fell to the Americans without resistance. It came passively into English hands again and after the Revolution was allowed to fall into decay.

Not far from the remains of Crown Point fort is the beautiful and large monument to Samuel Champlain, known as the Champlain Memorial. It takes the form of a light-house and is most solidly and durably constructed. Erected through the joint subscription of the States of Vermont and New York, the monument is, as well, a tribute to public spirit. In character the light-house is memorial of the past rather than symbolic of the future; a heroic statue in bronze of Champlain faces the east and at the base of the statue is Rodin’s “La France,” presented to the States of New York and Vermont for this undertaking by France.

THE HEIGHTS OF QUEBEC

(THE CITADEL, CASTLE ST. LOUIS)

CANADA

That hardy mariner, Jacques Cartier, sailed up the St. Lawrence River in 1535, but it was not until 1608, when Champlain’s vessel brought the first permanent colonists of New France, that Quebec was founded. The storm-tossed little caravel entered the St. Lawrence in the early summer of that year. Champlain landed his miscellaneous following, built “L’Habitation,” as he named the first official residence in Quebec, and laid the foundations of a small fort, an act portentous of the stirring events which the future held calmly waiting their turn and which were to give Quebec so conspicuous a place in the military annals of the New World.

The first fortifications were little more than gun platforms placed at an advantageous position so as to command the river. Their site became the location of Castle St. Louis and is to-day the eastern end of the Dufferin Terrace. So it is easy to remember where Champlain laid the foundations of the new city.

By courtesy of Detroit Publishing Company

THE HEIGHTS OF QUEBEC]

The new seat of power was shortly to see its master exerting his authority in a way not to be lightly mistaken. Treachery was plotted by some among Champlain’s followers, who planned to assassinate their chief and sell his new city to the Spaniards. News of this move was brought to Champlain’s ears. He caused the ringleaders to be seized by his soldiers and hung in the fort until dead. In this fashion the stronghold saw its first acts of violence. Scurvy marked the passage of the first winter in the New World of the little fort’s defenders, and by the spring only the most hardy were alive.

The years which came between 1608 and 1629, the date of the first formal siege of Quebec, brought enlargement and strength to both the fort and the city. During this period both had been frequently surrounded by hostile Indians, who feared the white man’s guns too much to attempt an attack by storm but who prowled around beneath the very ramparts of the fort seeking for unwary adventurers who might be without the gates. The control of the little colony in France had passed through various hands, but always the chief executive in the New World had been its founder, the rugged Champlain. The year 1629 finds the little colony in the possession of the Company of the 100 Associates, an organization founded by His Excellency, Cardinal Richelieu, and of which His Eminence was himself a member, and the winter of this year finds the colony in its usual desperate straits, beleaguered by winter and by savage foe and deserted in all but name by its sponsors in France.

In the spring of 1629 the inhabitants of Quebec were gladdened by the intelligence that a fleet had been discerned from Cap Tourmente in the mouth of the river and that it was even then approaching the city. It was supposed that this was the long-wished-for squadron of relief ships and that all would be prosperity and good cheer in the town for a time now. The citizens assembled on the walls of the fort to descry the distant sail, when word was brought by a friendly Indian that the looked-for vessels, far from being messengers of peace, were, in fact, emissaries of war; that they were English, and that they had just burned and pillaged a fishing village in a care-free, happy-go-lucky fashion on the way up the river. War had been declared between England and France and Quebec had not received word of it! Joy was changed to woe.

The next day emissaries arrived from Sir David Kirke, the English admiral in command of the fleet, demanding the surrender of the town and the fort, but Champlain, believing that help would soon arrive from France and not being of the temper, anyhow, which quickly gives up, turned these messengers away with words of defiance. The first siege of Quebec was now begun.

To tell the truth it was an informal sort of matter, anyhow, this first siege of Quebec. The English vessels pounded away at the town for a day or two in a casual fashion and then drifted down the river. The French, on their part, had but fifty pounds of powder and were very careful about wasting any of this. Time passed and still no aid came from distant France. At length the intelligence which Champlain had been dreading was brought to him. The long-awaited French relief ships had entered the mouth of the St. Lawrence only to be overcome and seized by the English blockader. Hope had now departed, and when, in July, three English ships sailed up to the town, Champlain and his sixteen soldiers watched them apathetically because they knew that they, themselves, could do no more. Quebec was surrendered to the English and on July 20, 1629, the English flag for the first time flew over the little settlement. Said one of Kirke’s captains: “There was not in the sayde forte at the tyme of the rendition of the same, to this examinate’s knowledge, any victuals save only one tubb of bitter roots.”

It was not until 1632 that Quebec was restored to the French by the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, and during its three years of English occupancy the point had made no progress. The Indians did not like their rough, new associates and trade had languished. Even the fort was in sad condition.

The summer of 1632 saw the little settlement in French hands and under the guidance of Emery de Caen, a fiery French Huguenot. The next year found the colony once more in the direction of the veteran Champlain. It is not clear why de Caen was given power for this one year. On Christmas Day, 1635, the Father of New France passed peacefully away in the fort which had seen so many of his earthly activities. His body was laid to rest in a “chambre particulier,” according to old record. Late investigation inclines to the belief that Champlain’s last resting place was a niche hollowed out of the stone half way down Mountain Hill in full view of the strand on which his early “Habitation” was built.

The successor of Champlain, M. de Montmagny, a Knight of Malta, rebuilt of stone Champlain’s fort shortly after his arrival in 1636, and Castle St. Louis had now a most martial appearance. Close to the castle was the Jesuit presbytery, this close conjunction of church and Mars well typifying the union of powers which held authority in the colony. All public functions were religious in character and the black-robed priests held the balance of power in the council-room.

Throughout the quarter century following Champlain’s death the threat of Iroquois marauding hung over the little city and in 1660 Castle St. Louis witnessed a strange spectacle. It was the burning at the stake by the French of an Iroquois captive as a retaliation against the savages for their outrages. The Indian met his fate with fortitude, but reviled his captors unceasingly and predicted a dire future for the city. At length death put an end to his sufferings and his predictions. His spirit, according to the priests who were standing by, winged its way to the place of the redeemed, having been freed from sin by the fiery ordeal through which its body had passed.

Time went its way and brought the second siege of Quebec to Castle St. Louis. The bold and impetuous Frontenac was now at the helm of state and it was due to a three-headed expedition of his against the English colonies that this second siege was brought about. Incidentally, this expedition may be looked upon in another light as the opening blow in that long struggle between New France and New England which was to result in the extinguishing of the latter power in the New World. Three war parties set out from the fortifications at Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers. The first reached the Dutch settlement of Corlaer (Schenectady) on the Hudson and brought about the horrible and historic Schenectady massacre. In similar fashion the other parties fell upon towns in New England. The northern English colonies which had hitherto been kept asunder by jealousies united against a common foe and equipped an expedition which was to set forth from Massachusetts against Quebec.

The vessels of the fleet consisted of thirty-two ships ranging in size from the _Six Friends_, a roisterer of the seas which had been engaged in the dangerous West India trade, and mounted forty-four guns, to humble fishing smacks. The commander was William Phips, afterward Sir William Phips, a strange favorite of Fortune whose adventurous and large-fisted career carried him through gold-seeking in the Spanish Main, knighthood from the British Crown, and the governorship, by royal appointment, of Massachusetts. Volunteers were called for and nearly four thousand men responded to the call. Provisions were laid in for four months and all was ready for the start.

After waiting so long in Boston for help from England that winter was almost at hand, Sir William at length gave the order to sail and the New England armada was launched upon its career. Its only lacks were a pilot who knew the St. Lawrence River, a sufficiency of gunpowder and a commander competent to direct the expedition. The eventual failure of the undertaking was not hard to forecast.

The fleet anchored a little below Quebec in the autumn of 1690. Frontenac was ready and waiting for it. A messenger was sent from the fleet to the French governor demanding surrender. He was taken in a canoe to the landing place and blindfolded. Then he was directed up the steep streets and crooked stairs of the little city by a devious path to Castle St. Louis where Frontenac, with his aides in full uniform, was waiting to receive him. During his progress onward he was jostled and pushed to make him think that there were immense crowds of people in the little city, and hoarse orders were shouted near his ear to imaginary soldiery. At length he stood in the council-room of our little fort and the bandage was taken from his eyes. The scene of splendor before him at first filled him with confusion, but he quickly recovered poise and delivered his message.

“No,” returned Frontenac, “I will answer your general only by the mouths of cannon, that he may learn that a man like me is not to be summoned in this fashion. Let him do his best and I will do mine!”

During the short and futile siege which followed, the cannonading between the vessels of Sir William’s fleet and the French fortification was so terrific that experienced military officers declared that they had heard nothing like it. At length the besiegers sailed away baffled and the furious little fort grumbled down to another season of peace. Phips reached Boston in November, and the rest of his fleet straggled in one by one, such as were not lost in the storms of the perilous Nova Scotia coast. Frontenac, in celebration of the deliverance of Quebec, established the little church of Notre Dame de la Victoire which stands in Quebec as a memorial of those days.

The beginning of the eighteenth century saw the fortifications of Quebec strengthened and enlarged. Vauban, the great engineer, furnished the plans which were carried out under Frontenac’s personal supervision. For twenty leagues around, the habitants were pressed into service and even the gentlefolk of the colony volunteered for work with pick and spade, so eager was the sentiment to carry out Vauban’s plans. A line of solid earthworks was extended on the flank of the city from Cape Diamond to the St. Charles River, and now for the first time the summit of Cape Diamond was fortified, this redoubt with sixteen cannon being the foundation of the present-day citadel of Quebec. In the foundation of the new work a copper plate, discovered at the demolition of the old walls in 1854, was buried bearing the following inscription:

In the year of grace 1693 under the reign of the Most August,
Most Invincible and Most Christian King, Louis the Great,
Fourteenth of that name, the most Excellent and Most Illustrious
Lord, Louis de Buade, Count of Frontenac, twice viceroy of all
New France, after having three years before repulsed, routed and
completely conquered the rebellious inhabitants of New England,
who besieged this town of Quebec and who threatened to renew
the attack this year, constructed, at the charge of the King,
this citadel, with the fortifications therewith connected, for
the defence of the country and the safety of the people and for
confounding yet again a people perfidious towards God and towards
its lawful king. And he has laid this first stone.

In 1709 the sturdy colonists of New England planned another expedition against Quebec. This time the home government had promised to help. But arrangements were delayed and it became late autumn before the expedition was ready to set out. Under the circumstances a fight against the frigid winter of Quebec as well as its stone strongholds was not to be considered.

The next attempt upon the little city took place in 1711, when a strong fleet under Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker set sail from Boston on the 30th of July. Under a different commander this effort might have resulted in success to the British arms, but Admiral Walker scorned all advice and drove his big frigates on so recklessly amidst the dense fogs and sharp reefs of Newfoundland, that eight battleships were beaten to pieces by the waves and rocks. Eight hundred and eighty-four people, thirty-four of them women, were drowned. Admiral Walker sailed ignominiously back to Boston, and in Quebec the happy French changed the name of their little church of Notre Dame de la Victoire to that of Notre Dame des Victoires.

Yet the persistence of the English was at length to have its way. In 1720 the walls of Quebec were enlarged and made mightier, and the citadel, largely in the form in which it exists to-day, was erected. Vaudreuil, the last governor of New France, loudly proclaimed that the city was impregnable. In 1759 came the expedition of Wolfe against Quebec, the final outcome of which and the method of attack, with Wolfe’s heroic death on the Plains of Abraham, is a story that every schoolboy knows.

This conflict was the first in which the citadel took part. The mighty works in which Vaudreuil trusted so loudly had been overcome on their first trial, while the high-perched, precariously-placed little “Castle,” which Champlain had first built and which his successors had altered to suit their times, had withstood innumerable Indian attacks and had seen three assaults by Europeans fail against it. The spirit of the men who manned the forts had changed with their times.

There is another tale of siege and Quebec which is not widely familiar and yet which all Americans should know. It is the story of Montgomery’s expedition during the Revolution--an expedition in which he lost his life and in which Benedict Arnold played a conspicuous part.

Richard Montgomery was a lieutenant in Wolfe’s army and was thoroughly familiar with Quebec. At the outbreak of the War of Independence he was deputized to lead an army up the Hudson and by the familiar approach along the Richelieu River and the St. Lawrence to Quebec. Benedict Arnold led another force through the tangled forests of northern Maine and New Hampshire, reaching Quebec ahead, even, of Montgomery. The combined forces laid siege to the city through the winter, and in the most desperate assault of all, one in which Wolfe’s feat of scaling the cliff was attempted, Montgomery lost his life. After six months the United States troops departed, confessing failure.

From that time to this the military history of Quebec has been uneventful. In the early part of the nineteenth century old Castle St. Louis, which had stood so many storms and assaults, succumbed to fire. The site is now an open square with some relics and a fine view over the river.

The great citadel of Quebec rises three hundred and fifty feet above the river and covers nearly forty acres. The portion of the works overlooking the St. Lawrence is called the Grand Battery, while the surmounting pinnacle of the citadel is known as the King’s Bastion. From the King’s Bastion a most glorious panorama is spread out before one, embracing the city, the great river, hundreds of miles of forest and farm land, the Laurentian mountains in the distance in one direction and the green hills of Vermont far away in another.

All of the old works of Quebec have been retired from active service in a military sense. The city is protected by modern fortifications in other quarters.

Two memorials record two great events in the history of the citadel. The chief is the Wolfe-Montcalm monument erected just behind the Dufferin Terrace in a little green enclosure known as the Governor’s Garden. The second is a simple tablet set up in the face of the cliff on the river-front below the citadel, marking the spot where the United States General Montgomery fell in the winter of 1775.

FORT ANNAPOLIS ROYAL

ANNAPOLIS--ANNAPOLIS BASIN, NOVA SCOTIA

More by accident than by design the Sieur de Monts, in 1604, with his oddly assorted band of adventurers on the foggy Bay of Fundy, steered into the rocky entrance which leads into the beautiful landlocked basin of present-day Annapolis in Nova Scotia. One of his followers, the Baron de Potrincourt, was so enchanted by the beauty of the scene that he asked a grant of land here. This was given him, and upon this land in the next year he built himself first a fort, then a house, and then several more houses. This was the beginning of Port Royal, now known as Annapolis, the second oldest fortified place in the Western Hemisphere.

By Courtesy of The Boston Times

GUNS, PARADE AND ANCIENT OFFICERS’ QUARTERS, FORT ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, N. S.]

The voyager to-day may repeat de Monts’s experience and with no design to do that, too. Fogs wrap the eastern and western coasts of Nova Scotia in an impenetrable blanket most of the time. The traveller who sails,--let us say,--from St. Johns, New Brunswick, for the Annapolis Basin, crosses sparkling waters, and then, as he enters the mountainous cleft which gives entrance to this beautiful bay, comes into the belt of mist which obscures all of the coast. He hears the fog horn on the point at the entrance,--which de Monts did not hear,--and then suddenly, like an apparition, the land looms into view; there is a lane of shrouded, uncertain water, between towering misty headlands; and, then, he is beyond the mists. Annapolis Basin, bright and blue with soft clouds overhead, like a highland lake, lies before him. At the far head of the Basin, where the delicate horizon merges into the sky, is Annapolis. It is not hard to understand Potrincourt’s enthusiasm for this beautiful spot. It is hard to understand how de Monts himself could have passed over this locality in favor of the barren Isle St. Croix for his first settlement, for this is what he did.

The winter of 1604 was passed by the little colonizing expedition at St. Croix--the sandy island which is now the boundary line between Canada and Maine. Potrincourt went back to France with de Monts to secure supplies and settlers for his own pet project, whose setting was Annapolis Basin, and returned with his chief in June, 1605, to find that the companions they had left behind them at St. Croix had had a sorry winter. The whole settlement was then moved over to Potrincourt’s Port Royal. This was the beginning of Annapolis.

The makeup of de Monts’s expedition was thoroughly typical of the colonizing bodies sent out by France in that day. There were men of the noblest blood of France, of whom our Potrincourt was a conspicuous example, and there was, also, the sweeping of the offscouring of the most dissolute cities of the Old World. The motives which inspired these different men were no doubt as mixed as the character of the men and as pleasant a theme of speculation, but with this we will have nothing to do. The second winter of de Monts’s adventurers, even at sheltered Annapolis, was severe, and it was with joy that the men saw the spring of 1606 arrive and bring with it the little ship from France which annually brought supplies and new blood from the Old World.

In this ship there was one arrival who must be given a special consideration. A poet-lawyer,--a strange combination, at that,--Marc Lescarbot eventually was to write his name in fame as the author of one of the earliest histories of New France, one of the most authentic records in existence of the early adventures of the French in the New World; but in our regard of him now we must consider the high spirit and bold emprise which he brought with him to cheer his companions and to help them through the rigors of this early settlement. A rhymester of some skill, he tuned his lyre to the most trivial events to keep his associates in good spirits, and in this last endeavor displayed an ingenuity which cannot help but endear him to all generations which like brave deeds done in blithe ways. He organized the Ordre de la Bon Temps, the only requirements for membership in which were presence in the little colony, and the duties of whose members were on successive days to provide a banquet for their brethren. There was formality attached to the office, too. Theatrical masques were gotten up and odd tasks were devised for all Knights of the Merry Time. Lescarbot infused a brave spirit into even the most dreary of the odd crew which made up this colony. We can picture the merry adventurers in their rude little fort engaged in their pranks of drollery thousands of miles away from home and with inhospitable wilderness and bleak shores for environs.

The charter of the colony was revoked in 1607, by one of those pleasing inconsistencies of royalty which inspire in the student of the past so thorough a belief in the theory of the divine right of kings, and the brave Order of the Merry Time to a man, with retainers and family vessels, embarked upon the skittish little vessels in which they entrusted themselves to the Atlantic and sailed back to France. It was not for three years that any of them returned, but in 1610 perseverance on de Potrincourt’s part had triumphed over royal pudding-headedness once more, and in that year he came back again to his colony. It is related that he found everything in Port Royal exactly as he had left it, not a lock or a bar in the little fort having been disturbed by the Indians, who displayed, in addition to their honesty, another engaging trait of fidelity to friendship by the many manifestations of joy which they made at having with them again their friends, the Frenchmen. Not again was Port Royal to be entirely deserted.

In 1613 the Jesuits of Port Royal, a class to themselves, abandoned the place and attempted the settlement of a picturesque inlet on Mount Desert Island on the coast of present-day Maine, their inlet still bearing the name of Frenchmen’s Bay. The freebooting Argall, a piratical seafarer from the new colony of Virginia far south on the Atlantic Coast, heard of this settlement and descended upon it in force. Most of the French were killed after a brave but ineffectual resistance, and fire and axe were given to their settlement. In the following year this Argall heard of the presence of Port Royal, for news travelled slowly in those days, and proceeded against that point after completing his work of pillage at Mount Desert and St. Croix. Taking the little place by surprise with a superior force, he scattered the inhabitants, burned the village, and razed the fort to the ground. Potrincourt, a survivor, returned to France and fell fighting at the siege of Mery in the following year.

From this time until the signing of the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye in 1632, Port Royal and Acadia were held in the hands of the British, and during this time occurred that odd experiment of Sir William Mackenzie to make of Acadia a New Scotland or Caledonia. The Scottish knight obtained the concession of the Acadian peninsula from King James in 1621 and founded a colony on the site or very near the site of Port Royal, building a fort at this point. Charles I renewed the charter granted by his predecessor, and created an order of minor nobility known as the Knights Baronets of Nova Scotia. It became Mackenzie’s idea to establish in the New Caledonia the feudal institutions of the Old World. His colony was not a success even during its short life, and in 1632 Port Royal passed by treaty to the French, thus putting an end effectually to New Caledonia and its Knights Baronets of the dissolute Charles’s erection.

The see-saw between French and English was once more to incline in the English favor as regards Acadia. The cession of this peninsula to the French had always been looked on with disfavor by the New England colonists, because it gave their hereditary enemies a secure base from which to send out privateering expeditions against their shipping. In 1654, Cromwell the Protector dispatched a force to ensure the subjugation of the Dutch on the Island of Manhattan. Peace with Holland was concluded by England before this purpose was effected, and it was then determined to turn these arms to the reconquest of Acadia. An expedition was accordingly fitted out secretly in Massachusetts and dispatched upon its mission. The French forts on the Penobscot and at St. John were speedily reduced. Le Borgne was at Port Royal with one hundred and fifty men but he attempted little resistance and the post once more came into English possession.

Until 1667 Port Royal was in the hands of the English, and then by the Treaty of Breda the whole of Acadia was returned to the French. During their occupancy the English had spent large sums repairing the fortifications in Acadia under their control, and in this undertaking the importance of Port Royal was duly recognized.

For the next generation the French made Port Royal their base, and the place acquired an evil reputation with the English because of the marauding sea expeditions which proceeded from out of there. Finally, in 1690, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts raised a levy and empowered Sir William Phips to go against the ancient stronghold. This doughty gentleman was successful in his mission and the port was in English hands again--this time hands of destruction.

After the departure of their enemies the French rebuilt Port Royal and it became, once more, a busy shipping point and the haunt of privateers. It is not difficult to-day to appreciate the fine strategic value of Port Royal, set at the head of its beautiful landlocked basin, but it is difficult, to-day, as the river now stands, to appreciate how vessels of any burthen could go up to its wharves. But at that time, doubtless, the river had not filled up to the degree that it has to-day.

In 1704 and again in 1705, the pertinacious New Englanders went upon futile expeditions against Port Royal, each time being driven off without much loss and each time evincing a singular lack of spirit in their enterprise, a lack of spirit all the more remarkable when one considers the undertakings which they faced and carried through at other times in their history. The taking of Port Royal seems to have become a sort of obsession with them--a theme for an idle hour, a pet worry which they would take up when all other worries failed them. Finally, in 1710, before the onslaught of a combined force of Her Majesty Queen Anne’s soldiery and New England militia, Port Royal fell to the English for the last time, bravely and gallantly fighting against overwhelming odds. Its spirited commandant, M. Subercase, with a famished army of one hundred and fifty men, marched out through the ranks of three thousand five hundred enemies and the red flag of England was raised where the white one of France had flown. Port Royal was renamed Annapolis in honor of the English sovereign, and Colonel Vetch, with four hundred and fifty men, occupied the fort. Though it was endangered by French arms several times thereafter, the little fort was never again out of English possession.

The sod ramparts of the fort have been carefully maintained and are to-day the cherished possession of Annapolis--or Annapolis Port Royal, as its inhabitants, making an odd mixture of its names, prefer to call it. From them one may gaze down the placid little river over a scene very like that upon which its French and English commanders looked on their separate turns and different generations. It is difficult really to visualize the events through which the little fort has passed, but if one considers that its history goes as far back beyond the days of the American Revolution as the beginning of the twentieth century comes this side of the Revolution, one begins to perceive how big is its historical background as events go in America.

The officers’ quarters,--a quaint, sturdy, low building,--and the magazine are still standing in the fort at Port Royal, both very ancient and very suggestive edifices, neither one as ancient as the walls of the little fort.

THE CITADEL AT HALIFAX

NOVA SCOTIA

The province of Acadia had been in English possession for nearly half a century when, in 1749, the powers that were in the Mother Country decided that Annapolis, the little game-cock city of the peninsula, whose history went back to 1605, was not a fitting place for the capital of the province. Its harbor, while beautiful and secure, was not large enough for the purposes that England had in mind; moreover, it was on the western side of the peninsula, so that to get to it from Europe one must pass around Cape Sable and up the foggy Bay of Fundy. And so we find that the home authorities projected a new city, which was to be the capital of the province and whose location was to be the magnificent harbor of Chebucto on the east coast of Acadia. That they did not go astray in their anticipations of the future is proved by the present-day Halifax, Nova Scotia’s principal city, the child of the plans of these Englishmen of 1749.

The value of Chebucto as a harbor had been known for many years before this time, we may assume. It had been for many years a rendezvous for British vessels in American waters. When D’Anville’s misfortuned fleet of French men-of-war was scattered by the elements, its remnants came together in Chebucto Bay. That there was some form of settlement on the shores of the bay ere this time is highly probable, but the existence of human life in any organized form here, if such existence there was, has been completely over-shadowed in retrospect by the magnitude of the enterprise by which the present-day Halifax was founded.

As a consequence of its last war there were in England numbers of young and able-bodied men set suddenly at liberty who had been engaged in military or semi-military pursuits. Liberal inducements were offered these people to go to the projected metropolis. A free passage, maintenance for a year was promised, and grants of land varying from fifty to six hundred acres were given. The Imperial Government voted the sum of forty thousand pounds to help defray expenses. This sum was increased to four hundred thousand pounds before five years had passed. The Hon. Edward Cornwallis was appointed and the protection of British institutions and laws was promised.

The fleet on which the colony set sail entered Chebucto Bay in the month of July, 1749. There were thirteen transports, conveying nearly three thousand settlers. These were men of good stock, and the vigor with which they attacked the problems before them was sufficient evidence of this fact. Streets were promptly laid out, a civil government was organized, and the entire population got to work on the practical issue of providing shelter for themselves and their families. Houses were built, and, last, but not least, in that day and generation a fort was erected on the rounded top of the hill around which they had plotted their town. This was the forerunner of the citadel of Halifax of to-day. Around the entire settlement was built a high palisade.

The early history of Halifax did not include sieges or sustained attacks by an enemy, but it was in the atmosphere of unrest and conflict from its first days. While the French residents of Acadia had not been molested in their possession of land in Nova Scotia, they had never taken the oath of allegiance to England. Among them were many turbulent spirits who incited the Micmac Indians of the country to outrages against English people and who took part in these outrages themselves in the disguise of savages. Moreover, the French had pressed the boundaries of Canada as close to the boundaries of Acadia as they dared, and they continually tried to foment ill feeling amidst the simple Acadian peasants against the English. The story of the days between the conquest of Acadia by the English and the final peace between France and England in the New World is one of partisan warfare, of forays and minor sieges and attacks by land and water.

All of these things went on around Halifax, and enemy vessels even slipped into her harbor in bold dashes upon rich covey or unsuspecting foe. From Halifax went forth Lawrence at the order of Governor Cornwallis to oppose the French at Beasejour, now Cumberland, where the French had built a fort on what they claimed was their own ground. Lawrence built another fort on the opposite side of the little stream of Missigouache, which the French claimed to be the boundary between the rival domains, and went back to Halifax for reinforcements. His building the fort was opposed by the French skirmish, and the blood shed in this little skirmish was the first blood to flow in combat between France and England in Old World or New since the treaty of Aix la Chapelle.

In the council rooms of the citadel at Halifax the order to deport the French peasantry, or Acadians, was debated. From the government house here went forth the orders that this act should be done. The story of the deportation of the Acadians and of their sufferings has been told many times in prose and very beautifully by Longfellow in verse.

During the American Revolution and during the War of 1812, Halifax was the centre of activity of the British naval forces, and so it has continued to this day. During the War of the Revolution and the War of 1812 merchant vessels were brought to this port to be sold as prizes. During the great European war of this time of writing merchant vessels suspected of carrying contraband and seized by the British in the American Atlantic waters have been taken to Halifax to be passed on by a prize court.

The citadel of Halifax is not one of its prime defences to-day. It has become more of a public park than a strong arm for battle. From its walls magnificent views of the harbor of Halifax can be obtained, one of the most splendid harbors in the world, to-day as stimulating to enterprise as in the days when Chebucto Bay was cast for the part of a great port by the Lords of Trade of England.

FORT GEORGE

CASTINE--MAINE

The little town of Castine, on the Penobscot River, Maine, is a favorite resort for summer visitors, who are attracted by its fine air, its abundance of sea food, and its accessibility to the interior of the country. These same considerations together with the fine strategic location of Castine Peninsula at the head of Penobscot Bay, guarding the entrance to the Penobscot River, influenced the French adventurers of three hundred and more years ago to plant their settlement of Pentagoet and to build a fort in this very vicinity. Traditions of the settlement and grass-covered ruins of the fort are still to be discovered at Castine.

In the course of the years there came here the British at war with the colonies, and His Majesty’s forces built Fort George, an important post in its day and one of the best preserved Revolutionary works in New England. These ruins are the scene of pilgrimage of hundreds of people annually--merry parties from the summer colonies which dot the shores of Penobscot Bay or from Mount Desert Island, around the corner as the land lies from Castine.

The remains of Fort George might even to-day be, with no disproportionate labor, put into condition for defence. The fort was a square bastioned work protected by a moat excavated down to solid rock. Each bastion was pierced with four embrasures. Though no buildings now remain inside the fortress, the position of the barracks, magazine and guard-house may easily be traced.

Standing on the ruined wall of Fort George, one can easily discern in what features lay its strength and importance. The approach on three sides is by steep ascents, and especially is this the case to the south or seaward, the quarter from which attack might be expected. The shape of the peninsula is seen. Very similar to the peninsula on which Portland is situated, it is a large swollen heart of land hung to the mainland by a cord from the north. To the south the eye has a wide prospect, bounded in the distance by the blue mountains of the Camden range. To the west is Brigadier’s Island, and blue water where Belfast lies in the distance. To the north Fort Point can be seen with the granite walls of the never-completed Fort Pownall, begun by Governor Pownall in 1759. North of east is more water and the distant solitary Blue Hill.

The military history of Fort George reflects no great credit on American sagacity, though it throws into strong light the national aggressive spirit. The first four years of the American Revolution passed very peacefully in Maine (then a part of Massachusetts), though its hardy seamen and backwoodsmen were not backward in joining the fighting forces to the south. Then, in 1779, the British powers in Halifax decided to carry the war into the northern colonies. Accordingly, in June of that year, Colonel Francis M’Lean was despatched from the aforesaid port with nine hundred men to seize and fortify the well-known peninsula of Castine or, as it was then known, Penobscot Peninsula. He landed on the 12th of June, and with great energy commenced to establish himself firmly in his position.

The news was immediately carried to the Massachusetts fathers at Boston. Hancock was then Governor and General Gates commanded the Eastern Department of the colonies, with headquarters at Providence. With that cocksureness for which the Puritan colony has been distinguished since its foundation, the rulers of Massachusetts at Boston put their heads together without notifying Gates, the Continental Congress, or the leaders of the war in this country, and resolved to push an expedition against M’Lean. An embargo of forty days was put upon vessels in Massachusetts ports, so that transport possibilities could not put to sea, and a large land and naval force was raised.

The army was commanded by Solomon Lovell; the fleet by Captain Saltonstall of the _Warren_, a fine frigate of thirty-two guns. Peleg Wadsworth was second in command to Lovell, and Paul Revere, of Longfellow’s poem, was in charge of the artillery. The land forces numbered about twelve hundred men, and this number might be augmented by three hundred marines from the fleet. There were enough guns of large calibre and other supplies of war. The fleet was formidable in appearance and equipment, but it was entirely lacking in discipline and co-ordination, as was shortly to be seen.

The force appeared off Castine on the 25th of July, 1779, and found the fort unfinished and thoroughly unprepared for defence. M’Lean despatched messengers to Halifax for aid, and kept busily on with his defences. Two bastions had not been begun and the two remaining, with the curtains, had not been raised more than four or five feet. Captain Mowatt, a thoroughly-hated British naval officer, and the bombarder of defenceless Portland, was in the harbor with three light vessels with which he took position to prevent a landing on the south side of the peninsula. A deep trench was cut across the isthmus connecting with the mainland.

No landing could be made except beneath the precipitous bluff, two hundred feet high, on the west.

On the third day the Americans succeeded in landing and in securing a position on the heights. Instead of making a final assault upon the unfinished fort now, however, they dallied where they stood, threw up earthworks and fought out a wordy battle amongst themselves as to how to go ahead. The commanding officers disagreed on any one plan, so, finally, at this late date, they appealed to General Gates for instructions. Two weeks passed and Sir George Collier arrived with a British fleet to relieve his beleaguered countrymen. The Americans were obliged to take to their heels.

General Wadsworth retired to his home near Thomaston, not a great distance from Castine, and was captured by a British detachment sent out from the fort for the purpose. His escape from the fort with a companion, Major Burton, is one of the interesting minor episodes of the history of that point. Suffice it to say that General Wadsworth on a dark night managed to get over the walls by the aid of a torn blanket and reached the mainland. Eventually he made Portland and safety.

For the remainder of the Revolution the British were at Castine, from whence they went forth on many expeditions of depredation. The loss of this little peninsula became a serious consideration, indeed, to the Americans.

During the War of 1812 Castine once more became a British stronghold, when, in 1814, the American defenders gave up the post to a force which made it a centre for plundering coast towns east and west, levying forced contributions, and destroying ship-yards. At this time Bangor was taken, Belfast visited, and Hampden pillaged. After a stay of eleven months the British left Castine in April, 1815. In the neighborhood of the fort they left a reputation for gayety, their stay having included a round of balls, teas, and dinners.

The history of Castine as a fortified point under New France commences with the re-occupation of Acadia, Nova Scotia, under Richelieu’s strong direction. Castine, or Pentagoet, as the French called it, was an extreme outpost against the English and was to be maintained at all costs. In 1654, however, it fell to the conquering hand of Sedgwick, a Massachusetts officer who reduced all French posts in Acadia. Sedgwick describes it as a small well-planned work mounting eight guns. It was not until 1670 that the French flag was again unfurled over Pentagoet, and, at this time, it is shown in old records that the place was considerably enlarged and strengthened, only to fall, in 1674, to buccaneers from San Domingo, who carried off Chambly, the commander, and held him to ransom.

The next Frenchman whom we find at Pentagoet was that strange product of sophistication and savagery, the Baron St. Castine. Vincent, Baron St. Castine, came to America with his regiment in 1665, and the wild life of the great forests seems to have called him from the first. When his regiment was disbanded shortly after its arrival in this country, Castine plunged into the forests and took up life in the fashion that the Indians lived it. He joined the tribe of the Abenakis, a mighty people of that day, and become so high in their favor that he married the daughter of the chief, Madocawando, an implacable foe of the English. In 1685 we find Castine in command at Pentagoet with his dusky followers around him. He never changed his wife, though we have reason to believe that, like Sir William Johnson, of later times, he found pleasure in many coppery enchantresses. Toward the close of this century his fort and trading post was captured and destroyed by the English, and the Baron himself, it is believed, returned to his native France. His half-breed son, by his Indian wife, for many years carried fire and sword against the English and was a picturesque figure in the wars of the Massachusetts border.

FORT FREDERICK

PEMAQUID--MAINE

The English clenched hand which answered the brandishing of the French mailed fist at Pentagoet, now Castine, was Fort Frederick at Pemaquid, that anciently-known peninsula which marks the entrance to the Kennebec River. Parts of the walls of old Fort Frederick are still standing, its entire outlines are plainly to be discerned, and it is a favorite point of visit with the many people who make their homes in this part of the Maine coast during the summer months.