At Skenesborough there was a portage from Lake Champlain to Wood Creek,[137] a stream which flows into the lake from the south. While boats were being dragged across from the lake to the river with a view to further advance, the 9th Regiment was sent on by land to Fort Anne, twelve miles distant in a due southerly direction. By the evening of the 7th the English drew near to the fort, and on the following day they were attacked and hard pressed by a stronger body of Americans. They took up a position on a hill, and held their ground resolutely, until the whoop of Indians told that reinforcements were coming up: the Americans then gave way, and, setting fire to Fort Anne, fell back to Fort Edward. The English in their turn returned to Skenesborough, in the neighbourhood of which, on the 9th and 10th of July, the whole army, excluding the troops required to garrison Ticonderoga, was concentrated, the line extending eastward from the head of Lake Champlain towards Castleton. [Sidenote: Result of the operations.] ‘General Burgoyne has taken Ticonderoga, and given a new complexion to the aspect of affairs, which was very wan indeed,’ wrote Horace Walpole, when the news reached England.[138] So far the operations had been triumphantly successful. Hardly an attempt had been made by the Americans to hold their ground at Ticonderoga and Mount Independence, although months had been spent in strengthening the positions, and the number of the defenders was variously estimated at from 3,000 to 5,000 men. Great quantities of stores, of boats, of guns had fallen into British hands: the enemy’s loss on the retreat had been heavy, and the rapidity with which the retreat had been followed up had caused widespread alarm. For the moment there seemed nothing to check the tide of British victory, but time, place, and insufficiency of numbers gradually told against Burgoyne’s enterprise. He, too, had suffered some losses, though small when compared with those of the Americans; and his army, already inadequate in numbers for the expedition, was further weakened by the necessity of garrisoning Ticonderoga with some 900 men. He applied to Carleton to supply the requisite number of soldiers for the garrison from the troops who, in accordance with the instructions from home, were retained for the defence of Canada, but Carleton felt himself bound to refuse the request. It was Germain who had given the orders, and yet the same man, writing from England in the following September, on receipt of Burgoyne’s account of the capture of Ticonderoga, stated that he presumed that the post would be garrisoned from Canada.[139] [Sidenote: The two routes to the Hudson.] [Sidenote: Burgoyne’s line of advance.] [Sidenote: His object was to threaten the New England States.]