the peace of Utrecht. Annapolis, on the west coast of Nova Scotia, the capital of that island, was the Frenchman's next objective. The fort there was weak and had only a small garrison, but it held out for a month and beat off the French who retired, having brought a hornet's nest about their ears. The merchants of Boston had long suffered from the privateers who made Louisburg their headquarters to prey on the New England commerce. The idea of getting this thorn out of their side, by retaliating on Louisburg itself for the attack made thence on Canso and Annapolis, was too much for them when Shirley, their Governor, first proposed the scheme. But he pressed it, and they undertook the desperate venture of attacking with raw militia, unprovided with siege artillery, one of the strongest fortresses in the world. Raising 3000 men themselves they were helped by a contingent of 1200 more from Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire. This force was embarked in local craft on March 24, 1745, under the command of William Pepperell, a Boston merchant and landowner, who had served in, and risen to the command of, the Maine militia. On April 3 the expedition got to Canso, where three English men-of-war happened to meet them, and were able to cover the landing at Louisburg a month later. Smitten with panic, the French detachment which held the Grand Battery at the entrance to the port abandoned it, a small party of the invaders took possession and turned the guns on their original owners. This piece of good fortune, and the sinking by the English squadron of a French vessel bringing supplies, led to the surrender of Louisburg, with its garrison of 2000 men on June 17 without the final assault being necessary. It was a most remarkable enterprise on the part of amateurs in the art of war, experts in which would never have ventured to undertake it under such conditions. The success was due, apart from good fortune, to the quality and fighting power of the hardy farmers and fishermen engaged. The lesson of what such men could do, if provoked, might well have been laid to heart by the authorities in England who tried to coerce their sons thirty years later.

To the intense disgust of the colonists, Cape Breton including Louisburg which they had so gallantly won,

was restored to France in exchange for Madras, by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in October 1748. England, however, recouped the colonies for their expenditure in the Louisburg expedition, and in the following year there arrived in Massachusetts for this purpose such a mass of coin as the colony, always short of it, had never seen. It consisted of £183,649 sterling, 653,000 ounces of silver and ten tons of copper. The peace of Aix-laChapelle, like that of Utrecht in 1713, was merely a truce, which lasted till 1756. Meanwhile both England and France were girding their loins for the decisive struggle, and it was during this period that Pownall arrived on the scene in 1753, with three or four years before him in which to study the situation before he was called to take a responsible part in it.

This chapter has been devoted to explaining in what condition he found things. It may be summarised by saying that in the course of about a century the colonists, aided by the fertility of the soil and other natural advantages, such as the fisheries, had advanced from the position of a few settlers scattered on the edge of a wilderness to that of organised and powerful communities living in a considerable degree of prosperity. The map at end of this chapter, and especially the profile sketch below it, will serve to shew that even at this time they had merely got a foothold on the fringe of the continent, nothing to the west of the Alleghanies was theirs.

To obtain as much as that, they had had enormous difficulties to contend with; they had been in constant strife with the Indians; sometimes at war with the French, always menaced by them; harassed by disputes with the Crown and its Governors; hampered in their industries and their commerce by the English legislature whose authority they disputed. Those troubles had still to be disposed of before the new country could fully expand. We shall now see what part Pownall took in dealing with these people to whom, when he landed, his name was not unfamiliar. In the days of the Commonwealth to which they dated back Ralph Pownall, born at Witton in 1601, was in Cromwell's army. As a Major he was one of those who commanded the "Forlorn of 1 Economic and Social History of New England, Weedon, ii. p. 675.

Foot" at the battle of Preston in 1648,' he was afterwards on the Court-Martial at Chester which condemned the Earl of Derby to death in 1651.2

The best of the colonists in New England came from the upper middle class in old England to which Pownall himself belonged. They largely derived their origin from the eastern counties; he was a Lincolnshire born man and country bred, thus able to understand their outdoor ways of life. Lastly, he had connections among them. George Pownall, born at Witton in 1638, emigrated in 1682 to Massachusetts, and his descendants are still in the United States.9

1 Thomas Carlyle, Cromwell's Letters, Preface to No. Ixiii.

2 Earwaker's East Cheshire, ii., note to p. 13.

3 He appears on Penn's chart of Philadelphia, 1683, as part-owner of Block No. 38, containing 1000 acres, it fronted the Schuykill River, and was the sixth from the north side. On the same chart appears the name of Joseph Pownall who owned Block No. 3, less than 1000 acres, two blocks back from the Schuykill, and the same distance south of the High Street.

MAP SHEWING THE CONDITION OF NORTH AMERICA IN 1763.

Reduced in scale from that facing p. 284, vol xxxiii., of the Gentleman's Magazine.