d float. By such trifling
means two active officers had secured the temporary control of the
lake itself and of the approaches to it from the south. There being
no roads, the British, debarred from the water line, were unable to
advance. Sir Guy Carleton, Governor and Commander-in-Chief in Canada,
strengthened the works at St. John's, and built a schooner; but his
force was inadequate to meet that of the Americans.

The seizure of the two posts, being an act of offensive war, was not
at once pleasing to the American Congress, which still clung to the
hope of reconciliation; but events were marching rapidly, and
ere summer was over the invasion of Canada was ordered. General
Montgomery, appointed to that enterprise, embarked at Crown Point with
two thousand men on September 4th, and soon afterwards appeared before
St. John's, which after prolonged operations capitulated on the 3d of
November. On the 13th Montgomery entered Montreal, and thence pressed
down the St. Lawrence to Pointe aux Trembles, twenty miles above
Quebec. There he joined Arnold, who in the month of October had
crossed the northern wilderness, between the head waters of the
Kennebec River and St. Lawrence. On the way he had endured immense
privations, losing five hundred men of the twelve hundred with whom he
started; and upon arriving opposite Quebec, on the 10th of November,
three days had been unavoidably spent in collecting boats to pass the
river. Crossing on the night of the 13th, this adventurous soldier
and his little command climbed the Heights of Abraham by the same
path that had served Wolfe so well sixteen years before. With
characteristic audacity he summoned the place. The demand of course
was refused; but that Carleton did not fall at once upon the little
band of seven hundred that bearded him shows by how feeble a tenure
Great Britain then held Canada. Immediately after the junction
Montgomery advanced on Quebec, where he appeared on the 5th of
December. Winter having already begun, and neither his numbers nor
his equipments being adequate to regular siege operations, he very
properly decided to try the desperate chance of an assault upon the
strongest fortress in America. This was made on the night of December
31st, 1775. Whatever possibility of success there may have been
vanished with the death of Montgomery, who fell at the head of his
men.

The American army retired three miles up the river, went into
winter-quarters, and establis