hed a land blockade of Quebec, which was
cut off from the sea by the ice. "For five months," wrote Carleton to
the Secretary for War, on the 14th of May, 1776, "this town has been
closely invested by the rebels." From this unpleasant position it was
relieved on the 6th of May, when signals were exchanged between it and
the _Surprise_, the advance ship of a squadron under Captain Charles
Douglas,[2] which had sailed from England on the 11th of March.
Arriving off the mouth of the St. Lawrence, on the morning of April
12th, Douglas found ice extending nearly twenty miles to sea, and
packed too closely to admit of working through it by dexterous
steering. The urgency of the case not admitting delay, he ran his
ship, the _Isis_, 50, with a speed of five knots, against a large
piece of ice about ten or twelve feet thick, to test the effect. The
ice, probably softened by salt water and salt air, went to pieces.
"Encouraged by this experiment," continues Douglas, somewhat
magnificently, "we thought it an enterprise worthy an English ship of
the line in our King and country's sacred cause, and an effort due to
the gallant defenders of Quebec, to make the attempt of pressing her
by force of sail, through the thick, broad, and closely connected
fields of ice, to which we saw no bounds towards the western part of
our horizon. Before night (when blowing a snow-storm, we brought-to,
or rather stopped), we had penetrated about eight leagues into it,
describing our path all the way with bits of the sheathing of the
ship's bottom, and sometimes pieces of the cutwater, but none of the
oak plank; and it was pleasant enough at times, when we stuck fast,
to see Lord Petersham exercising his troops on the crusted surface
of that fluid through which the ship had so recently sailed." It took
nine days of this work to reach Anticosti Island, after which the ice
seems to have given no more trouble; but further delay was occasioned
by fogs, calms, and head winds.

Upon the arrival of the ships of war, the Americans at once retreated.
During the winter, though reinforcements must have been received from
time to time, they had wasted from exposure, and from small-pox,
which ravaged the camp. On the 1st of May the returns showed nineteen
hundred men present, of whom only a thousand were fit for duty. There
were then on hand but three days' provisions, and none other nearer
than St. John's. The inhabitants would of course render no further
assistan