south from Crown Point. It is a rocky angle of land, washed on three
sides by the water and partly covered on the fourth side by a deep
morass. On the space on the northwest quarter, between the morass and
the channel, the French had formerly constructed lines of
fortification, which still remained, and those lines the Americans had
strengthened by additional works.

Opposite Ticonderoga on the east side of the channel, which is here
between three and four hundred yards wide, stands a high circular hill
called Mount Independence, which had been occupied by the Americans
when they abandoned Crown Point, and carefully fortified. On the top of
it, which is flat, they had erected a fort and provided it sufficiently
with artillery. Near the foot of the mountain, which extends to the
water's edge, they had raised entrenchments and mounted them with heavy
guns, and had covered those lower works by a battery about half way up
the hill.

With prodigious labor they had constructed a communication between
those two posts by means of a wooden bridge which was supported by
twenty-two strong wooden pillars placed at nearly equal distances from
each other. The spaces between the pillars were filled up by separate
floats, strongly fastened to each other and to the pillars by chains
and rivets. The bridge was twelve feet wide and the side of it next
Lake Champlain was defended by a boom formed of large pieces of timber,
bolted and bound together by double iron chains an inch and a half
thick. Thus an easy communication was established between Ticonderoga
and Mount Independence and the passage of vessels up the strait
prevented.

Immediately after passing Ticonderoga the channel becomes wider and, on