THE FIRST BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN. 



HAS CURRENT HISTORY CORRECTLY LOCATED ITS SITE ? 

 By George F. Bixby. 

 [Read before the Albany Institute, November 5, 1889.J 



The Champlain Valley has been famous as battle ground. The 

 burden of the first tradition handed down from prehistoric time was 

 of fierce wars which had driven their once numerous inhabitants from 

 these shores and islands. Here, along the " gate of the country/' was 

 bloody ground, and it requires little effort of the imagination to con- 

 ceive the tide of battle as ebbing and flowing past Rock Reggio, the 

 ancient landmark between the savage tribes of the North and the South. 

 The thought strikes one forcibly at the outset, in pursuing a line of in- 

 quiry like this, and comparing the old-world records with those of the 

 new, the former reaching back to the earliest human races, that here 

 darkness covers the face of that great deep; that the historic time of this 

 valley spans but a comparative hand-breadth of the past — less than 

 eight generations — and that it would be inexcusable if, even here, 

 manifest errors bearing on important data should, without protest, be 

 awarded a place on the pages of history. 



From the numerous conflicts of historic time on Lake Champlain, 

 three stand out with marked distinctness. Seventy-five years ago in 

 September, 1814, the last naval battle between the United States and 

 the "Mother Country" was fought on Cumberland Bay, and thirty 

 eight years before that, in October, 1776, was the first naval battle be- 

 tween the same powers, when the infant republic, under the lion-hearted 

 Arnold, dared to stand up against the mistress of the seas on her own 

 domain. The localities of both these engagements are well and truly 

 marked; the first by the wreck of the Royal Savage, one of our own 

 vessels sunk in that action, still visible at low water, and the last by 

 well-attested charts, as well as by the recollection of living witnesses; 

 and it is a remarkable fact that these two important battle grounds, 

 where our first and last naval struggle with Great Britain took place, 

 lie only five miles apart on Lake Champlain, without even a stone 

 raised to commemorate them. The first of these three battles — 

 standing on the outer verge of historic time — was the original 

 " Battle of Lake Champlain/' fought two hundred and eighty years 



