3-003-972 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Fort Montgomery, at Rowse's Point, Lake Champlain, [New York State], 1861. 'The American Government...have for some time past been repairing and enlarging the system of fortifications on the Canadian frontier. One of the strongest of the enlarged works is Fort Montgomery...[which] has been nicknamed Fort Blunder, because erected upon British soil, afterwards given up, under treaty, to the United States. The fort has been considerably enlarged, and is now nearly completed. It will mount sixty-five guns in position, and twenty-five en barbette. It is protected on the land side by a moat and rampart of earth; and, on the whole, it is a very formidable work. Rowse's Point [ie, Rouses Point] is about thirty-eight miles from Montreal, and upon the main line of railway communication between Boston, New York, and Canada. Lake Champlain, which lies between the States of New York and Vermont, extending for four miles into Lower Canada, is 105 miles in length...It contains numerous islands, receives several rivers, and discharges its superfluous waters by the Richelieu river into the St. Lawrence. This lake was the centre of many important military operations during the revolutionary war, and now forms an important medium of commerce'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.