"Last evening Major McCracken of White Creek came here, and delivered me a copy of a paper which had been found there, in the same hand-writing as one that was put in the same place last year, announcing the approach of Major Carleton with the troops under his command. This contains in substance--'That the writer had received a letter from a friend in Canada, to give him notice of the danger which threatened these parts; that 1500 men were gone to Ticonderoga, from whence they were to proceed to Fort Edward and White Creek; that they are to be down in this month, and from what he could learn, they were to desolate the country.' The Major thinks he knows the channel through which this intelligence is conveyed, and that it may be depended upon;--as it in some degree corroborates that given by Harris, and the person I had sent to Crown Point, it ought not to be slighted. Please to communicate it to the Governor and General Washington.
"Fourteen of the nine months men have already deserted, two of whom are apprehended. There are now at this post only thirty-nine of them. As the Continental troops here are without shoes it is impossible to keep out the necessary scouts. Cannot a parcel of shoes be obtained at Albany, and sent up to them? It will be of importance to give the earliest intelligence if the party discovered by Colonel Lewis should appear on the Mohawk river, that we may with the troops here, and what militia we may be able to collect, try to intercept them."
In a postscript to a letter of the 21st, General Schuyler observed:--"Since the above I have been informed _from very good authority,_ that the enemy's morning and evening guns at Ticonderoga have been distinctly heard near Fort Anne for three or four days past" And on the 24th the General wrote more confidently still of the enemy's approach. "Captain Gray is returned. He has not been near enough to determine the enemy's force, but sufficiently so to discover, by the fires, that they are numerous. Is it not strange, and subject of suspicion, that the Vermonters should not afford us any intelligence of the enemy's approach, as they must certainly know of his arrival at Crown Point and Ticonderoga?" [FN]
[FN] This ambiguous conduct of Vermont was the consequence of the quarrel between the settlers of the grants from New Hampshire, which were within the chartered limits, and the government of New-York. Colonel Allen, not long before, had been in Albany upon the business of the settlers, and had come away dissatisfied--having uttered a threat on his departure. He was at this time, as General Schuyler was informed, at the Isle Au Noix--sick--as was pretended.