of labour to complete, were presently cut through by the sailors and
artificers. The squadron were enabled to pass at nine o'clock, and at
three came up with the enemy near Skenesborough Falls. After a short
resistance, two of the gallies surrendered, and the enemy set fire to
the others, and to all their bateaux and stores.

Early next morning, Reidesel and Frazer overtook a strong body of the
enemy, and defeated them, with the loss of their Commander, and nearly
1,000 men killed, wounded, and taken. Another division was encountered
and routed by Colonel Hill. The fugitives escaped to Fort Edward, on the
Hudson.

General Burgoyne might now have returned to Ticonderoga, and thence
crossed to the head of Lake George, from which there was a waggon-road
to Fort Edward, only eighteen miles distant. But fearing that a
retrograde movement might check the enthusiasm of the army, now elated
with their rapid career of victory, underrating the difficulties of the
country, and too much despising an enemy who had been so easily
dispersed, he determined to ascend Wood Creek as far as Fort Anne,
whence the direct distance to the Hudson is shorter. He waited,
therefore, a few days near Skenesborough for his tents, baggage, and
provisions; employing himself, in the mean time, in clearing the
navigation of Wood Creek, while his people at Ticonderoga were
transporting the stores and artillery over the portages to Lake George.

The enemy offered little resistance in the advance to Fort Edward, but
the difficulties of the country were almost insurmountable. So broken
was it by creeks and morasses, that it became necessary to construct
more than forty bridges and causeways, one of them over a morass two
miles long. The enemy had created every possible obstruction by felling