[Footnote 750:  Levis a Bourlamaque, 1 Nov. 1759.]

Concerning this year’s operations on the Lakes, it may be observed that the result was not what the French feared, or what the British colonists had cause to hope.  If, at the end of winter, Amherst had begun, as he might have done, the building of armed vessels at the head of the navigable waters of Lake Champlain, where Whitehall now stands, he would have had a navy ready to his hand before August, and would have been able to follow the retreating French without delay, and attack them at Isle-aux-Noix before they had finished their fortifications.  And if, at the same time, he had directed Prideaux, instead of attacking Niagara, to co-operate with him by descending the St. Lawrence towards Montreal, the prospect was good that the two armies would have united at the place, and ended the campaign by the reduction of all Canada.  In this case Niagara and all the western posts would have fallen without a blow.

Major Robert Rogers, sent in September to punish the Abenakis of St. Francis, had addressed himself to the task with his usual vigor.  These Indians had been settled for about three quarters of a century on the River St. Francis, a few miles above its junction with the St. Lawrence.  They were nominal Christians, and had been under the control of their missionaries for three generations; but though zealous and sometimes fanatical in their devotion to the forms of Romanism, they remained thorough savages in dress, habits, and character.  They were the scourge of the New England borders, where they surprised and burned farmhouses and small hamlets, killed men, women, and children without distinction, carried others prisoners to their village, subjected them to the torture of “running the gantlet,” and compelled them to witness dances of triumph around the scalps of parents, children, and friends.

Amherst’s instructions to Rogers contained the following:  “Remember the barbarities that have been committed by the enemy’s Indian scoundrels.  Take your revenge, but don’t forget that, though those dastardly villains have promiscuously murdered women and children of all ages, it is my order that no women or children be killed or hurt.”

Rogers and his men set out in whaleboats, and, eluding the French armed vessels, then in full activity, came, on the tenth day, to Missisquoi Bay, at the north end of Lake Champlain.  Here he hid his boats, leaving two friendly Indians to watch them from a distance, and inform him should the enemy discover them.  He then began his march for St. Francis, when, on the evening of the second day, the two Indians overtook him with the startling news that a party of about four hundred French had found the boats, and that half of them were on his tracks in hot pursuit.  It was certain that the alarm would soon be given, and other parties sent to cut him off.  He took the bold resolution of outmarching his pursuers, pushing