defeated. It
was the opening contest of the French and Indian War.

As for Fort Duquesne, which the French had built, it gave
rise to the most disastrous event of the war, the defeat of
General Braddock and his army, on their march to capture it.
It continued in French hands till near the end of the war,
its final capture by Washington being nearly the closing
event in the contest which wrested from the hands of the
French all their possessions on the American continent.

SOME ADVENTURES OF MAJOR PUTNAM.

The vicinity of the mountain-girdled, island-dotted,
tourist-inviting Lake George has perhaps been the scene of
more of the romance of war than any other locality that
could be named. Fort Ticonderoga, on the ridge between that
beautiful sheet of water and Lake Champlain, is a point
vital with stirring memories, among which the striking
exploit of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain boys is of
imperishable interest. Fort William Henry, at the lower end
of Lake George, is memorable as the locality of one of the
most nerve-shaking examples of Indian treachery and
barbarity, a scene which Cooper's fruitful pen has brought
well within the kingdom of romance. The history of the whole
vicinity, in short, is laden with picturesque incident, and
the details of fact never approached those of romantic
fiction more closely than in the annals of this interesting
region.

Israel Putnam, best known to us as one of the most daring
heroes of the Revolution, began here his career, in the
French and Indian War, as scout and ranger, and of no
American frontiersman can a more exciting series of
adventures be told. Some of these adventures it is our
purpose here to give.

After the Fort William Henry massacre, the American forces
were concentrated in Fort Edward, on the head-waters of the
Hudson; Putnam, with his corps of Rangers, occupying an
outpost station, on a small island near the fort. Fearing a
hostile visit from the victorious French, the commander,
General Lyman, made all haste to strengthen his defences,
sending a party of a hundred and fifty men into the
neighboring forest to cut timber for that purpose. Captain
Little, with fifty British regulars, was deputized to
protect these men at their labors. This supporting party was
posted on a narrow ridge leading to the fort, with a morass
on one side, a creek on the other, and the forest in front.

One morning, at daybreak, a sentinel who stood on the edge
of th