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Updated: July 3, 2025
Every day troops kept on arriving, and by the 27th of December there were already at Korti a considerable portion of the Sussex, the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, the Essex, Gordon Highlanders, Black Watch, and Staffordshire, all of whom had come up in the whale-boats; a large number of the commissariat, transport, hospital, and engineer train in native boats; the whole of the Guards' Camel Corps, and the greater portion of the Heavy and Light Camel Corps, a hundred men of the Marines, who were provided with camels, and appointed to form part of the Guards' Camel Corps, two squadrons of the 19th Hussars, and the Mounted Infantry.
Finished coaling ship this morning. At about 11 A.M. a couple of whale-boats from two vessels in the offing pulled into the harbour; went on board our prize, and thence to the shore. Although the two masters were told that we were the Iroquois, they seemed at once to have comprehended the true state of the case, and to make haste to put themselves out of harm's way.
After his return and report, Abercrombie prepared to proceed against Ticonderoga, situated on a tongue of land in Lake Champlain, at the mouth of the strait communicating with Lake George. On the 5th of July, the forces were embarked in one hundred and twenty-five whale-boats, and nine hundred batteaux, with the artillery on rafts.
In the month of July, General Amherst embarked with nearly twelve thousand men, at the upper part of Lake George, and proceeded down it, as Abercrombie had done in the preceding year, in a vast fleet of whale-boats, batteaux, and rafts, and all the glitter and parade of war. On the 22d, the army debarked at the lower part of the lake, and advanced toward Ticonderoga.
Midnight brought us to Kabambaie and the banks of the Kasai, where I found food and sanctuary at a Forminiere post. Here the thousands of tons of freight that come up the river from Dima by steamer and which are carried by motor trucks, ox teams, and on the heads of natives to this point, are placed on whale-boats and sent up the river to Tshikapa.
They went so near the mountain, quite within its shadows, in fact, as to render it difficult to say what they were; though it was supposed they might be whale-boats, of which there were more than a hundred in the flotilla, carrying officers of rank. No one spoke. It appeared to me that not a human voice was raised among those humiliated and defeated thousands.
Throughout the night, when the troops were encamped by the whale-boats, a black figure danced in the strong moonlight on the sand-bar and shouted that Khartoum the accursed one was dead, was dead, was dead, that two steamers were rock-staked on the Nile outside the city, and that of all their crews there remained not one; and Khartoum was dead, was dead, was dead! But Torpenhow took no heed.
The finback, I must mention, although the most plentiful of all the whale family, and sometimes attaining the length of ninety feet, is never attacked by whale-boats when he is "loose," i.e., free, and is only captured when his struggles with the ferocious killers have so exhausted him that a boat can approach and dart a harpoon into or lance him.
In such a case the boatmaker who built the whale-boats, the ropemaker who twisted the stout, flexible manila cord to hold the whale, the sailmaker and the cooper were all interested with the crew and the owners in the success of the voyage.
On the morning of July 5, 1758, a magnificent flotilla set forth from the southern end of Lake George, consisting of 135 whale-boats and 900 bateaux, laden with soldiers, cannon, and military stores of every description. As it sailed through the Narrows it made a line six miles in length, and was indeed a most imposing spectacle.
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