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. He was a brave, able, but perhaps over-conservative general, since after his easy victory ovei Montcalm's forces, he occupied himself more in fort building than in active operations of warfare, and in following up advantages gained. During this campaign the " Half-Way Brook " post was first occupied in March, 1759, by Rogers, the Ranger (with his scouting party of three hundred and fifty-eight men, including officers), who was starting out to go down Lake George on the ice on one of his usual disastrous spying expeditions. In the month of May, troops and new levies were beginning to assemble at Albany, under General Amherst's supervision. While they were
" In passing we may say that Lieut. Thompson returned home safely, served at Concord and Lexington, and, his biographer says, finally "became one of the most useful men in the Town of Woburn." To him is attributed the discovery of the " Baldwin Apple," and a monument commemorating this gift to mankind, has been erected to his memory, making applicable in peculiar fashion Milton's lines, " Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war." " General Abercrombie, according to documents in William L. Stone's possession, also spelled his name " Abercromby." Montresor spells it with a " y," but leading American historians use the termination " ie."