opened communication with Murray, and they both
looked daily for the arrival of Amherst, whose approach was
rumored by prisoners and deserters.[845]

[Footnote 843: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 29 Aout, 1760_.]

[Footnote 844: _A List of the Forces employed in the Expedition against
Canada, 1760_. Compare Mante, 340, Knox, II. 392, and Rogers,
188. Chevalier Johnstone, who was with Bougainville, says "about
four thousand," which Vaudreuil multiplies to twelve thousand.]

[Footnote 845: Rogers, _Journals. Diary of a Sergeant in the Army of
Haviland_. Johnstone, _Campaign of 1760. Bigot au Ministre, 29 Aout,
1760_.]

The army of Amherst had gathered at Oswego in July. On
the tenth of August it was all afloat on Lake Ontario, to the
number of ten thousand one hundred and forty-two men, besides about
seven hundred Indians under Sir William Johnson.[846]Before the
fifteenth the whole had reached La Presentation, otherwise called
Oswegatchie or La Galette, the seat of Father Piquet's mission. Near
by was a French armed brig, the "Ottawa," with ten cannon and a hundred
men, threatening destruction to Amherst's bateaux and whaleboats.
Five gunboats attacked and captured her. Then the army advanced again,
and were presently joined by two armed vessels of their own which had
lingered behind, bewildered among the channels of the Thousand Islands.

[Footnote 846: _A List of the Forces employed in the Expedition against
Canada_. Compare Mante, 301, and Knox, II. 403.]

Near the head of the rapids, a little below La Galette,
stood Fort Levis, built the year before on an islet in mid-channel.
Amherst might have passed its batteries with slight loss, continuing
his voyage without paying it the honor of a siege; and this was what
the French commanders feared that he would do. "We shall be fortunate,"
Levis wrote to Bourlamaque, "if the enemy amuse themselves with capturing
it. My chief anxiety is lest Amherst should reach Montreal
so soon that we may not have time to unite our forces to attack Haviland
or Murray." If he had better known the English commander, Levis would
have seen that he was not the man to leave a post of the enemy in his
rear under any circumstances; and Amherst had also another reason for
wishing to get the garrison into his hands, for he expected to
find among them the pilots whom he needed to guide his boats down the
rapids. He therefore invested the fort, and, on the twenty-third,
cannonaded it from his vessels