_Note to LAKE GEORGE AND TICONDEROGA._—This important position, situated on Lake Champlain near the foot of the Horicon, (called by the English, Lake George, and by the French, St. Sacrament,) was first fortified by the French, and was the point from which they made so many incursions, in conjunction with the Indians, upon the English settlements. Lord Abercrombie led an army of nearly 16,000 men against it in the year 1658; but was defeated with a loss of 2000 men, and one of his most distinguished officers, Lord Howe, who fell at the head of one of the advance columns. In the following year it surrendered to General Amherst, who led a force of nearly equal number against it. Its surprise and capture by Ethan Allen at the commencement of our revolution, is, we presume, familiar to every American, as also the fact of Burgoyne’s getting heavy cannon upon the neighbouring mountain which had heretofore been considered impracticable, and from which the works were entirely commanded. The necessary withdrawal of the army by St. Clair, after blowing up the works, is as related in the text. * * * * * _Note to Bass Fishing._—CREW OF THE ESSEX FRIGATE.—In the bloody and heroic defence of the Essex, in which, out of a crew of two hundred and fifty-five men, one hundred and fifty-three were killed and wounded! a number of instances of individual daring and devotion are recorded of the common sailors. Besides the act of Ripley, which is mentioned in the text, one man received a cannon ball through his body, and exclaimed in the agonies of death—“Never mind, shipmates, I die for free trade and sailor’s rights.” Another expired inciting his shipmates to “fight for liberty!”—and another, Benjamin Hazen, having dressed himself in a clean shirt and jacket, threw himself overboard, declaring, that “he would never be incarcerated in an English prison.” An old man-of-war’s-man who was in her, informed the writer, that her sides were so decayed by exposure to the climate in which she had been cruizing, that the dust flew like smoke from every shot that came through the bulwarks, and that at the close of the action, when the Essex was lying perfectly helpless, a target for the two heavy British ships, riddled by every ball from their long guns, without the ability to return a single shot—he was near the quarter-deck and heard Commodore Porter walking up and down with hurried steps, repeatedly strike his breast and exclaim, in great apparent agony—“My Heaven!—is there no shot for me!” * * * * *