These are major European powers projecting their power by building these bastions. It gets to the importance of this corridor to them in that age,

There are these inexpert American seamen, never in a naval battle before, on their ships waiting for their first fight. It's morning. They look across Cumberland Head and they can see the tops of the British masts above the trees. They are thinking -- Oh my God, what are we facing,

Be sure to climb to the top floor in the fort's northwest corner, where narrow stairs lead up into one of the fort's tiny lookout posts. You'll see the Richelieu as a French soldier of long ago looked for the approach of an enemy,

Indeed, as a view of American military history it may be rivaled only by the vista from Little Round Top at Gettysburg,

Plattsburgh -- the land battle -- is a place that really grabbed me,

Along this corridor of history stand a lakeside tavern that once sheltered Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, a house in which George Washington and Benjamin Franklin took supper and the high walls and stone barracks of the largest fort the British ever built in North America,