Within a fortnight after Nicholson had given the first notice of what was intended, a fleet of fifteen ships of war, with forty transports, bringing five veteran regiments of Marlborough's army, arrived at Boston. Here they were detained upward of a month, waiting for provisions and the colonial auxiliaries. The want of notice caused some inevitable delay; but the northern colonies exerted themselves with remarkable promptitude and vigor. The credit of the English treasury, broken down by a long and expensive war, was so low at Boston, that nobody would purchase bills upon it without an indorsement, which Massachusetts furnished in the shape of bills of credit to the amount of £40,000, advanced to the merchants who supplied provisions to the fleet. After a delay, of which the officers loudly complained, the ships sailed at last with seven thousand men on board, half regulars and half provincials.

New York issued £10,000 in bills of credit to pay the expense of her share of the enterprise, taking care, however, to deposit the money in the hands of special commissioners. Pennsylvania, under the name of a present to the queen, contributed £2,000, but none of the colonies further south seemed to have taken any interest in the matter. Some fifteen hundred troops, the quotas of Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, again placed under the command of Nicholson, assembled at Albany, for an attack on Montreal simultaneously with that on Quebec, and Nicholson's camp was presently joined by eight hundred warriors of the Five Nations. But the advance was cut short by news of the failure of the expedition by sea.

As the fleet was proceeding up the St. Lawrence during a dark and stormy night, through the obstinacy and negligence of Admiral Walker, eight transports were wrecked, and near a thousand men perished. Discouraged at this disaster, the Admiral turned about, and, sending home the colonial transports, sailed direct for England, not even stopping by the way, as his instructions had indicated, to attack the French posts in Newfoundland. The British officers concerned in the expedition, attempted to shift off on the colonists the blame of this failure. They alleged 'the interestedness, the ill-nature, and sourness of these people, whose hypocrisy and canting are insupportable.' The indignant

colonists, suspicious of the Tory ministry, believed that the whole enterprise was a scheme meant to fail, and specially designed for their disgrace and impoverishment. Harley, having quarreled with his colleagues, denounced it to the House of Commons as a job intended to put £20,000 into the pockets of St. John and Harcourt. Nowhere was the failure of this enterprise more felt than in New York. war with the Five Nations was even apprehended. That confederacy showed a strong disposition to go over to the French."

That "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith" worked well now. The Jesuits had at last obtained a hold upon the nations composing the League of the Iroquois, which had, as yet, proved the sole protectors of the early colonists on the lakes. There was an incidental war with the Tuscaroras in the meantime, against the German emigrants of North Carolina principally. Hear Hildreth's

account:

The expedition against Norridgewock, which the Governor had delayed, but afterward, on the remonstrance of the court, had sent forward, was not successful in seizing Rasles; but his papers, which fell into the hands of the assailants, who pillaged the church and the missionary's house, strengthened suspicions that the Indians were encouraged by Canadian support. The Indians retorted the attack on Norridgewock by burning Brunswick, a new village recently established on the Androscoggin. The tribes of Nova Scotia, also, joined in the war. At the Gut of Canso they seized seventeen fishing vessels belonging to Massachusetts, several of which, however, were presently recovered, with severe loss to the Indian captors.

When the General Court came together, new disputes arose between the governor and the House as to the conduct of the war, of which the representatives sought to engross the entire management. Disgusted by the opposition of an Assembly "more fit," as he thought, "for the affairs of farming than for the duty of legislators," Shute had secretly obtained leave to return home; and, without giving any intimation of his purposes, he suddenly left the province. The administration, by his departure, passed into the hands

of Dummer, the lieutenant-governor, who remained at the head of affairs for the next six years.

The General Court soon accommodated with Dummer the quarrel which Shute had left on his hands. He yielded to some of their demands, and they abandoned others. The Indian war proved expensive and annoying, and large issues of paper money became necessary to carry it on.

Connecticut, applied to for aid against the Indians, professed scruples as to the justice of the war, and begged Massachusetts to take care lest innocent blood were shed. These scruples were presently quieted, and Connecticut furnished the quota asked for. Attempts repeatedly made to engage the assistance of the Mohawks were less successful. They not only refused to take up the hatchet, but, what was still more unpalatable, they advised Massachusetts, as a sure means of peace, to restore the Indian lands and prisoners.

The attacks of the Indians extended along the whole northern frontier as far west as Connecticut river. To cover the towns in that valley, Fort Dummer was presently erected, on the site of what is now Brattleborough, the oldest English settlement within the limits of the present State of Vermont.

Having seized an armed schooner in one of the eastern harbors, a party of Indians cruised along the coast, and captured no less than seven vessels. It was deemed necessary to strike some decisive blow. Norridgewock was surprised by a second expedition; Rasles was slain, with some thirty of his Indian disciples; the sacred vessels and "the adorable body of Jesus Christ" were scoffingly profaned; the chapel was pillaged and burned, and the village broken

up.

The premium on scalps was raised to £100, payable, however, in the depreciated currency. Lovewell, a noted partisan, surprised, near the head of Salmon Falls river, ten Indians asleep round a fire. He killed them all, and marched in triumph to Dover, with their scalps hooped and elevated on poles. In a second expedition he was less successful. Near the head of the Saco, on the margin of a pond, he fell into an Indian ambush, and was slain at the first fire, with eight of his men. The rest defended themselves bravely through a whole day's fight, repulsed the Indians, and made good their retreat.

Embassadors, meanwhile, were sent to Canada to remonstrate against the countenance given there to the hostile Indians; and an application was made to the king, to compel the neighboring colonies and the Mohawks to join in the war. The Board of Trade inclined to favor this request; but, already, the Penobscots had proposed a peace, which the colonists were very glad to accept; and the Norridgewocks presently came into it. Judicious measures were taken to protect the Indians against the extortion and villainy of private traders, by the establishment of public trading-houses to supply them with goods at cost. By this means, peace was preserved for many years, and the settlements in Maine and New Hampshire extended without interruption.

The complicated designs of the French Jesuits assume an aspect of mystery and entanglement, which it does not comport with our present purpose to unravel. We will let the plain historic character of the period tell for itself in the language of Hildreth. He says:

Though the progress of New France, as compared with that of the British colonies, was but slow and inconsiderable, the French still entertained the grand project of appropriating the whole of that vast western valley from the great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The Iroquois were no longer hostile; and, if the missionary spirit was dying out, it had been succeeded by a mercantile spirit hardly less energetic and determined. The French fur traders ranged the whole west; the Foxes, the only hostile tribe on the upper lakes, had been chastised and driven from Green Bay. By the treaty of Utrecht, the traffic with the western Indians was equally open to the English traders; but it still remained, for the most part, in the hands of the French, constituting, indeed, almost the sole resource of Canada. The lands along the banks of the St. Lawrence had been granted in seigniories, much like the patroonships of New Netherland. The tenants who cultivated them, known as habitans, produced little more than was necessary for the local consumption. They were often, however, better off than the seigneurs, or feudal lords, whose rents and feudal rights amounted to little. They looked chiefly to public offices or commissions in the army and navy as a means of support, and to them, therefore, peace was always distasteful. By an edict of Louis XIV,

the nobles of Canada had been authorized to engage in commerce without any prejudice to their nobility. The fur trade, however, was principally in the hands of the bourgeoisie of Quebec and Montreal. The attempts to establish fisheries on the shores of the St. Lawrence had failed. Of the vessels that took cargoes to New France, some carried coal from Cape Breton to Martinique, to be used in boiling sugar; others bought fish in Newfoundland; but many returned in ballast. Notwithstanding objections in France, leave had been granted to establish linen manufactures in Canada, and coarse linens were now produced sufficient for the local demand. (1728.)

The administration of Canadian affairs was vested in the governor-general, the intendant, and a supreme council. The bishop named all the curates. The custom of Paris, the law of New France, under the conservative hands of the English, has preserved, like the Roman-Dutch code in British Guiana, authority in America long after having lost it in Europe. The population of Canada numbered at this time about thirty thousand. Quebec was a city of five thousand inhabitants. Many of the principal officers of the government were established there, and it could boast, in consequence, a more agreeable society than any other American town.

The "Creoles of Canada," natives, that is, of European descent, are described by Charlevoix as "well made, large, strong, robust, vigorous, enterprising, brave and indefatigable, but unpolished, presumptuous, self-reliant, esteeming themselves above all the nations of the earth, and somewhat lacking in filial veneration"-a portrait, not of the Canadian Creoles merely, but of the whole Creole-American race. The Canadians, true to their French origin, though inferior in industry, and much less wealthy, understood better than the Anglo-Americans the art of making themselves happy.

In Louisiana the French had secured the friendship of the Choctaws, a numerous confederacy inhabiting the region from the Lower Mississippi eastward to the Alabama, where they bordered on the Creeks. (1728.) Surrounded by the Choctaws, and dwelling mostly in a single village in the close vicinity of Fort Rosalie, where the Natchez, limited in numbers and extent of territory, but remarkable for a peculiar language and their singular religious and social institutions, which resembled, in several points, those of the Peruvians of