1743.

meeting-house was built for him to read in. His fame spread, and he was taken up for examination; but, when asked of what sect he was, he could not tell. In the glens of the Old Dominion, he had not heard of sects; he knew not that men could disagree.

1744

At Lancaster in Pennsylvania, the governor of that state, with commissioners from Maryland and from Virginia, in 1744, met the deputies of the Iroquois, who since the union with the Tuscaroras became known as the Six Nations. "We conquered," said they, "the country of the Indians beyond the mountains: if the Virginians ever gain a good right to it, it must be by us." And, for about four hundred pounds, the deputies of the Six Nations made "a deed recognising the king's July 2. right to all the lands that are or shall be, by his majesty's appointment, in the colony of Virginia." The lands in Maryland were in like manner confirmed to Lord Baltimore, but with definite limits; the deed to Virginia extended the claim of that colony indefinitely in the west and north-west.

The events of the war of England with France were then detailed, and the conditions of the former treaties of alliance were called to mind. "The covenant chain between us and Pennsylvania," replied Canassatego, "is an ancient one, and has never contracted rust. We shall have all your country under our eye. Before we came here, we told Onondio there was room enough at sea to fight, where he might do what he pleased; but he should not come upon our land to do any damage to our brethren." After a pause, it was added: "The Six Nations have a great authority over the praying Indians, who stand in the gates of the French: to show our further care, we have engaged these very Indians and other allies of the French; they have agreed with us they will not join against you." Then the chain of union was made as bright as the sun. The Virginians proposed to educate the children of the Iroquois at their public school. "Brother Assaragoa," they replied, we must let you know we love our children too well to send them so great a way; and the Indians are not inclined

66

to give their children learning. Your invitation is good, but our customs differ from yours." And then, acknowledging the rich gifts from the three provinces, they continued, as if aware of their doom: "We have provided a small present for you; but, alas! we are poor, and shall ever remain so, as long as there are so many Indian traders among us. Theirs and the white people's cattle eat up all the grass, and make deer scarce." And they presented three bundles of skins. At the close of the conference, the Indians gave, in their order, five loud cries; and the English agents, after a health to the king of England and the Six Nations, put an end to the assembly by three buzzas. Thus did Great Britain at once confirm its claims to the basin of the Ohio, and protect its northern frontier.

1744. July 4.

1747.

The sense of danger led the Pennsylvanians for the first time to a military organization effected by a voluntary system, under the influence of Franklin. "He was the sole author of two lotteries, that raised above six thousand pounds to pay for the charge of batteries on the river; and he "found a way to put the country on raising above one hundred and twenty companies of militia, of which Philadelphia raised ten, of about a hundred men each." "The women were so zealous that they furnished ten pairs of silk colors, wrought with various mottoes." Of the Quakers, many admitted the propriety of self-defence. "I principally esteem Benjamin Franklin," wrote Logan, "for saving the country by his contriving the militia. He was the prime actor in all this ;" and, when elected to the command of a regiment, he declined the distinction, and, as a humble volunteer, "himself carried a musket among the common soldiers."

1744. A body of French from Cape Breton, before the May. news of the declaration of war with France had been received in New England, surprised the little English garrison at Canso; destroyed the fishery, the fort, and the other buildings there; and removed eighty men, as prisoners of war, to Louisburg. The fortifications of Annapolis, the only remaining defence of Nova Scotia, were in a state of ruin.

An attack made upon it by Indians in the service of the French, accompanied by Le Loutre, their missionary, was with difficulty repelled. The inhabitants of the province, sixteen thousand in number, were of French origin; and a revolt of the people, with the aid of Indian allies, might have once more placed France in possession of it. While William Shirley, the governor of Massachusetts, foresaw the danger, and solicited aid from England, the officers and men taken at Canso, after passing the summer in captivity at Louisburg, were sent to Boston on parole. They brought accurate accounts of the condition of that fortress; and Shirley resolved on an enterprise for its reduction. The fishermen, especially of Marblehead, interrupted in their pursuits by the war, disdained an idle summer, and entered readily into the design. The legislature of Massachusetts, after some hesitation, resolved on the expedition by a majority of one vote. Solicited to render assistance, New York sent a small supply of artillery, and Pennsylvania of provisions; New England alone furnished men; of whom, Connecticut raised five hundred and sixteen; New Hampshire — to whose troops Whitefield gave, as Charles Wesley had done to Oglethorpe, the motto, "Nothing is to be despaired of, with Christ for the leader"

1745.

Jan.

contributed a detachment of three hundred and four; while the forces levied for the occasion by Massachusetts exceeded three thousand volunteers. Three hundred men sailed from Rhode Island, but too late for active service. An express-boat requested the co-operation of Commodore Warren at Antigua, with such ships as could be spared from the leeward islands; but, in a consultation with the captains of his squadron, it was unanimously resolved, in the absence of directions from England, not to engage in the scheme.

Thus, then, relying on themselves, the volunteers April. of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, with a merchant, William Pepperell of Maine, for their chief commander, met at Canso. The inventive genius of New England had been aroused; one proposed a model of a flying bridge, to scale the walls even before a breach should be made; another was ready with a caution against mines;

a third, who was a minister, presented to the merchant general, ignorant of war, a plan for encamping the army, opening trenches, and placing batteries. Shirley, wisest of all, gave instructions for the fleet of a hundred vessels to arrive together at a precise hour; heedless of the surf, to land in the dark on the rocky shore; to march forthwith, through thicket and bog, to the city, and beyond it; and to take the fortress and royal battery by surprise before daybreak. Such was the confiding spirit at home. The expedition itself was composed of fishermen, who, in time of war, could no longer use the hook and line on the Grand Bank, but with prudent forethought took with them their cod-lines; of mechanics, skilled from childhood in the use of the gun; of lumberers, inured to fatigue and encampments in the woods; of husbandmen from the interior, who had grown up with arms in their hands, accustomed to danger, keenest marksmen, disciplined in the pursuit of larger and smaller game; all volunteers; all commanded by officers from among themselves; many of them church members; almost all having wives and children. On the 1745. first Sabbath, how did "the very great company of people" come together on shore, to hear the sermon on enlisting as volunteers in the service of the Great Captain of our salvation! As the ice of Cape Breton was drifting in such heaps that a vessel could not enter its harbors, the New England fleet was detained many days at

April 7.

Canso, when, under a clear sky and a bright sun, the Apr. 23. squadron of Commodore Warren happily arrived.

Hardly had his council at Antigua declined the enterprise, when instructions from England bade him render every aid to Massachusetts; and, learning at sea the embarkation of the troops, he sailed directly to Canso. Apr. 24. The next day arrived nine vessels from Connecticut with the forces from that colony in high spirits and

good health.

On the last day of April, an hour after sunrise, the armament, in a hundred vessels of New England, entering the Bay of Chapeau Rouge, or Gabarus, as the English called it, came in sight of Louisburg. Its walls, raised on a neck

1745.

May 1.

of land on the south side of the harbor, forty feet thick at the base, and from twenty to thirty feet high, all within sweep of the bastions, surrounded by a ditch eighty feet wide, were furnished with one hundred and one cannon, seventysix swivels, and six mortars. The harbor was defended by an island battery of thirty twenty-two pounders, and by the royal battery on the shore, having thirty large cannon, a moat and bastions, all so perfect that it was thought two hundred men could have defended it against five thousand. On the other hand, the New England forces had but eighteen cannon and three mortars; but no sooner did they come in sight of the city, than, letting down the whaleboats, "they flew to shore, like eagles to the quarry." The French that came down to prevent the landing were put to flight, and driven into the woods. On the next day, a detachment of four hundred men, led by William Vaughan, a volunteer from New Hampshire, marched by the city, which it greeted with three cheers, and took post near the north-east harbor. The French who held the royal battery, struck with panic, spiked its guns, and abandoned it in the night. In the morning, boats from the city came to recover it; but Vaughan and thirteen men, standing on the beach, kept them from landing till a re-enforcement arrived. To a major in one of the regiments of Massachusetts, Seth Pomeroy from Northampton, a gunsmith, was assigned the oversight of above twenty smiths in drilling the cannon, which were little injured; and the fire from the city and the island battery was soon returned. "Louisburg," wrote Pomeroy to his family, "is an exceedingly strong place, and seems impregnable. It looks as if our campaign would last long; but I am willing to stay till God's time comes to deliver the city into our hands." "Suffer no anxious thought to rest in your mind about me," replied his wife, from the bosom of New England. "The whole town is much engaged with concern for the expedition, how Providence will order the affair, for which religious meetings every week are maintained. I leave you in the hand of God."