his ears and
nose, clad him in a resplendent war-dress, put silver bracelets on his
arms, hung a gorget on his breast with a flame colored ribbon, and
seated him in state on the top of a hillock, with his lance in his hand,
his gun in the hollow of his arm, his tomahawk in his belt, and his
kettle by his side. Then they all crouched about him in lugubrious
silence. A funeral harangue followed; and next a song and solemn dance
to the booming of the Indian drum. In the gray of the morning they
buried him as he sat, and placed food in the grave for his journey to
the land of souls.[508]

[Footnote 508: _Lettre du Pere Roubaud_.]

As the sun rose above the eastern mountains the French camp was all
astir. The column of Levis, with Indians to lead the way, moved through
the forest towards the fort, and Montcalm followed with the main body;
then the artillery boats rounded the point that had hid them from the
sight of the English, saluting them as they did so with musketry and
cannon; while a host of savages put out upon the lake, ranged their
canoes abreast in a line from shore to shore, and advanced slowly, with
measured paddle-strokes and yells of defiance.

The position of the enemy was full in sight before them. At the head of
the lake, towards the right, stood the fort, close to the edge of the
water. On its left was a marsh; then the rough piece of ground where
Johnson had encamped two years before; then a low, flat, rocky hill,
crowned with an entrenched camp; and, lastly, on the extreme left,
another marsh. Far around the fort and up the slopes of the western
mountain the forest had been cut down and burned, and the ground was
cumbered with blackened stumps and charred carcasses and limbs of fallen
trees, strewn in savage disorder one upon another.[509] This was the
work of Winslow in the autumn before. Distant shouts and war-cries, the
clatter of musketry, white puffs of smoke in the dismal clearing and
along the scorched edge of the bordering forest, told that Levis'
Indians were skirmishing with parties of the English, who had gone out
to save the cattle roaming in the neighborhood, and burn some
out-buildings that would have favored the besiegers. Others were taking
down the tents that stood on a plateau near the foot of the mountain on
the right, and moving them to the entrenchment on the hill. The garrison
sallied from the fort to support their comrades, and for a time the
firing was hot.

[Footnote 509: _