The diaries of those days show that, as yet, the temperance idea half a century or so afterward to arise in this locality, had no place among the hard drinking, hard swearing, and hard fighting men of that period, as these extracts from the Thompson Journal prove : ''August 28, Monday : Certified that Cape Breton was taken, and 63 cannon shot at Fort Edward and small arms. In joy we made

"^ For other and corroboratory original accounts of the attacks of July 20th and 27th see French despatches in Col. Doc. N. Y., Vol. X, pp. 750,816, 817,849,850, and English reports in Watson's Essex, pp. 96, 97; Pouchot's Memoirs, Vol. i, p. 123; Rogers' Journals, p. 117; Putnam's Journals, pp. 72- 7:i; Sewall's Wobum, Mass., pp. 550, 551, 552, 553; Dawson's Hist. Mag, Aug., 1871, pp. 117, irS; Cutter's Putnam, pp. 96, 97; Stark's Memoirs, pp. 26, 436. These accounts differ some in details but are alike in essentials.

THE HALF-WAY BROOK IN HISTORY, l8l

a great fire, and every soldier had a jill of Rum at the Half Way Brook; and it was a very rainy night. " August 29, Tuesday : 140 of us went and made a breastwork ; and we had a jill of rum; and we had a remarkable drink of flip this evening; a very cold night. "Sept. 5, Tuesday: I on guard; and we earned half a jill of rum by making great many bonfires." This diary tells of one more attack, which seems to have escaped the notice of other historians, and is therefore inserted at this point. Under date of Sept. 9th, it says : " Saturday : the picquet guard went to meet the teams ; a Sargeant and four men went forward to tell Half W^v Brook guard that the picquet was coming; and the Indians shot the Sergeant and scalped him before one man got to him ; and then the Indians ran away." "' With the close of the Abercrombie Campaign, and the abandonment of headquarters at Lake George, Fort Edward became once more the northern outpost of Colonial civilization." In 1759, Sir Geoffrey Amherst was made Commander-in-Chief of the English forces in America.