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Updated: June 12, 2025
As far as the eye could reach the brilliant procession filled the streets, presenting a glittering, undulating line of infantry, artillery, firemen, laddermen, axemen, zouaves, cadets, grangers, masons, templars, highlanders, citizens, &c, with gleaming arms, rustling flags, soul-stirring music, and other manifestations of patriotic enthusiasm.
After supper they would sit on the deacon seat in the bunk shanty and sing "Shanty Boy" and "Bung Yer Eye" till the folks in the settlements down on the Atlantic would think another nor'wester was blowing up. Some say the Seven Axemen were Bay Chaleur men; others declare they were all cousins and came from down Machias way.
After some hesitation as to the course the army should take, it was resolved to march for Lake George. Gangs of axemen were sent to hew a way, and, on the 26th, 2000 men marched for the lake, while Colonel Blanchard, of New Hampshire, remained with 500 to finish and defend Fort Lyman.
Many of the leading sections had leaped, regardless of all obstacles, into the trench, with a view of avenging their slaughtered officers; but these, like the axemen, had been carried away by the discharges from the bastion and the incessant fire poured upon them from the loop-holes of the stockade.
Nancy McDonald was nearing the end of her third month of forest travel. The Shagaunty valley lay behind her, desolated by the fierce axe of the men who lived by their slaughter. She had seen it all. She had studied the re-afforestation which followed on the heels of the axemen. And the seeming puerility of this effort to salve the wounds inflicted upon Nature had filled her with pitying contempt.
For a moment he paused, as if uncertain what course to pursue, then, seeing Middlemore close behind him, he leaped in, and striking a blow of his sabre upon the stockade, called loudly upon the axemen to follow. While he was yet shouting, a ball from a loop-hole, not three feet above his head, entered his brain, and he fell dead across the trench.
And every trapper has realized before spring that he made a sad mistake in not having it big enough to live in and store goods in. Quonab and Rolf were new at the business, and made the usual mistake. They planned their cabin far too small; 10 X 12 ft., instead of 12 X 20 ft. they made it, and 6-ft. walls, instead of 8-ft. walls. Both were expert axemen.
In a few days all was ready, and the expedition set out. It was a simple matter. There was no great train of sumpter mules or baggage wagons. Each man carried his own food and ammunition, and twenty axemen marched in front of the little army to cleave a way through the forest. The storm still raged. Rain fell in torrents, and the wind howled ceaselessly as on and on the men trudged.
Axemen were ready to be sent forward to remove abattis, and Captain Adams had twenty cannoneers ready to man captured guns. Every commanding officer of battalions was informed what he was expected to do, and thus all was in readiness. At half-past four in the morning of April 2d, the signal gun from Fort Fisher sounded the advance.
Notwithstanding the fall of their brave leader, and the whoopings of their enemies, the flagging spirits of the men were for a moment excited by the announcement of the return even of the small force of the axemen, and they defended themselves with a courage and determination worthy of a better result; but when, by the lurid light of the torches, now lying burning about the decks, they turned and beheld not their companions, but a fresh band of Indians, at whose pouch-belts dangled the reeking scalps of their murdered friends, they at once relinquished the combat as hopeless, and gave themselves unresistingly up to be bound by their captors.
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