So rough was the country between Lake Champlain and the Hudson that it took Burgoyne a month to bring his army the twenty-five miles which lay between Whitehall and Fort Edward. “The toil of the march was great, but supported with the utmost alacrity,” writes Burgoyne to Lord George Germaine on the 30th of July, 1777. “The country being a wilderness, in almost every part of the passage the enemy took the means of cutting large timber trees on both sides the roads so as to fall across and lengthways with the branches interwoven. The troops had not only layers of them to remove in places where it was impossible to take any other direction, but also they had above forty bridges to construct and others to repair, one of which was of logwood, over a morass two miles in extent.”[1] We find a letter from Burgoyne to Riedesel, on the 18th of July, exhorting the latter to make his officers cut down the amount of their baggage. Many English officers, says Burgoyne, are reduced to a small tent and a knapsack.[2]
The army met with little serious opposition on the way, though scarcely a day passed without firing. The Americans had retreated to Saratoga. Yet it was not until the 9th of August that Brigadier-general Fraser led the advanced guard to Fort Miller, seven miles beyond Fort Edward. He was followed by Lieutenant-colonel Baum, with the Brunswick dismounted dragoons and light infantry, some Canadian volunteers, and two small cannon. It had at first been proposed by Riedesel, and agreed to by Burgoyne, that Baum's
