r the other. Nevertheless the fear of falling into the
hands of the Indians, the idea of the horrible cruelties which they
practice on their prisoners, which shock human nature, prevented me
from sinking down with pain, and gave me strength to push on.

Arrived at a settlement at four in the afternoon, about a league and a
half from St. John's Fort, where De Bougainville caused his detachment
to halt and repose themselves for the first time since midnight, that
they left Isle aux Noix. I perceived there a boat going off to St.
Jean, and I had only strength enough remaining to throw myself into
it. We lost in this march about eighty men: those who could not hold
out were left behind, victims to the Indians. Arriving at St. John's
Fort, the first person I saw there was Poularies, on the river side,
who told me they had news of our retreat, and that he was sent with
his regiment to sustain us in case we had been pursued by the English.

We were now shut up in the island of Montreal on all sides. The
English were masters of the River Chambly by the possession of Isle
aux Noix. General Amherst approached with his army from Lake Ontario;
and General Murray was in march, coming up from Quebec, with six
thousand men that had passed through the winter there, and with some
men-of-war, one of which of about forty guns, on its arrival in sight
of the town of Montreal, greatly astonished, and excited the
admiration of, the inhabitants, who, from the ignorance and negligence
of those persons charged with the sounding of the St. Lawrence, had
never seen vessels arrive there of above sixty or seventy tons.

General Murray conducted himself as an officer of great understanding,
knowledge and capacity, and left nothing to do for General Amherst; he
employed five weeks in coming from Quebec to Montreal, which is only
sixty leagues, and did us during his march more harm by his policy
than by his army. He stopped often in the villages; spoke kindly to
the inhabitants he found at home in their houses--whom hunger and
famine had obliged to fly from our army at Montreal; gave provisions
to those unhappy creatures perishing for want of subsistence. He
burned, in some cases, the houses of those who were absent from home
and in the French army at Montreal, publishing everywhere an amnesty
and good treatment to all Canadians who would return to their
habitations and live there peaceably. In short--flattering some and
frightening others--he succe