th day of the month landed at the fort, where
the troops were immediately encamped. His next care was to lay the
foundation of a new fort, to be maintained for the further security of
the British dominions in that part of the country; and particularly for
preventing the inroads of scalping parties, by whom the plantations had
been dreadfully infested. Here information was received that the
enemy had retired to the Isle aux Noix, at the other end of the lake
Champlain, five leagues on the hither side of St. John's; that their
force encamped in that place, under the command of M. de Burlemaque,
consisted of three battalions and five piquets of regular troops, with
Canadians and marines, amounting in the whole to three thousand five
hundred effective men, provided with a numerous artillery; and that the
lake was occupied by four large vessels mounted with cannon, and manned
with piquets of different regiments, under the command and direction of
M. le Bras, a captain in the French navy, assisted by M. de Rigal, and
other sea-officers. In consequence of this intimation, general Amherst,
who had for some time employed captain Loring to superintend the
building of vessels at Ticonderoga, being resolved to have the
superiority on the lake, directed the captain to build with all possible
expedition a sloop of sixteen guns, and a radeau eighty-four feet in
length, capable of carrying six large cannon. These, together with a
brigantine, being finished, victualled, and manned by the eleventh
day of October, the general embarked with the whole of the troops
in batteaux, in order to attack the enemy; but next day, the weather
growing tempestuous, was obliged to take shelter in a bay on the western
shore, where the men were landed for refreshment. In the meantime,
captain Loring, with his small squadron, sailing down the lake, gave
chase to a French schooner, and drove three of their ships into a bay,
where two of them were sunk, and the third run aground by their own
crew, who escaped; one, however, was repaired and brought away by
captain Loring, so that now the French had but one schooner remaining.
General Amherst, after having been some days wind-bound, re-embarked his
forces, and proceeded down the lake; but the storm, which had abated,
beginning to blow with redoubled fury, so as to swell the waves
mountains high, the season for action being elapsed, and winter
setting in with the most rigorous severity, he saw the impossibility