American cause, and they disappeared by desertions, thirty or forty of a night, till he was left almost as forlorn as before. The Indians "were easily dejected and chose to be of the strongest side, so that when they were most wanted they vanished."

In this state of mutual weakness the inhabitants of the parishes of Chambly turned the scale. Ranging themselves under James Livingston of New York, then a resident in Canada, and assisted by Major Brown, with a small detachment from Montgomery, they sat down before the fort in Chambly, which, on the eighteenth of October, after a siege of a day and a half, was ingloriously surrendered by the English commandant. The colors of the seventh regiment were transmitted to congress; the prisoners, one hundred and sixty-eight in number, were marched to Connecticut; but the great gain to the Americans was seventeen cannon and six tons of powder.

The army of Montgomery yielded more readily to his guidance; Wooster of Connecticut had arrived, and set an example of cheerful obedience to his orders. At the north-west a battery was constructed on an eminence within two hundred and fifty yards of the fort; and by the thirtieth it was in full action. To raise the siege, Carleton, having by desperate exertions brought together about eight hundred Indians, Canadians, and regulars, on the last day of October attempted to take them across the St. Lawrence; but, as they drew near the southern bank, Warner, with three hundred Green Mountain Boys and men of the second New York regiment, poured on them so destructive a fire that they retired with loss and in disorder.

At the news of Carleton's defeat, Maclean, the commandant of St. John's, deserted by the Canadians and losing all hope of support, retired to Quebec, while the besiegers pushed on their work with unceasing diligence, keeping up a welldirected fire by day and night. On the third of November, after a siege of fifty days, the fort of St. John's surrendered; and its garrison, consisting of five hundred regulars and one hundred Canadians, many of whom were of the French gentry, marched out with the honors of war.

On the twelfth, unopposed, Montgomery took possession of Montreal. He came to give the Canadians the opportu

nity of establishing their freedom and reforming their laws; and he requested them to choose, as soon as possible, "faithful representatives to sit in the continental congress, and make a part of that union." He earnestly urged Schuyler to pass the winter in the chief town of upper Canada. “I have courted fortune," he wrote to his brother-in-law, "and found her kind. I have one more favor to solicit, and then I have done." Men, money, and artillery were wanting; in the face of a Canadian winter, he nevertheless resolved to form a junction with the regiments sent through the wilderness by Washington, and attempt the liberation of the lower part of the province through the co-operation alike of its French and English inhabitants. The attempt must be made before the breaking up of the ice in the river, when the arrival of British reinforcements from Europe would render success impossible.

The invasion of Canada by the Americans was the natural result of the capture of Ticonderoga. It was not in its origin the deliberate purpose of congress. An attack on the northern border of New York was formally threatened from Canada, and the opinion prevailed that it could be best resisted by meeting it in the land of the enemy. Washington had put aside every private suggestion to divide his strength; nor could he be tempted even to take part in an expedition against Nova Scotia. But as war raged on the St. Lawrence, his duty as commander-in-chief required that he should promote its success; and, being informed of the possibility of reaching Quebec by land, he was led to take the chances of surprising its citadel by the aid of the Canadians themselves. In this wise it came about that he organized an expedition to the lower St. Lawrence. For its chief officer he selected Benedict Arnold, who had taken part in the surprise of Ticonderoga, and who in former days as a trader had visited Quebec, where he still kept up a correspondence.

The detachment from the army round Boston consisted of ten companies of New England infantry, one of riflemen from Virginia, and two from Pennsylvania: in all, two battalions of about eleven hundred men.

The lieutenant-colonels were Roger Enos and the brave Christopher Greene of Rhode Island. The majors were Re

turn J. Meigs of Connecticut, and Timothy Bigelow, the early patriot of Worcester, Massachusetts. Daniel Morgan, with Humphreys and Heth, led the Virginia riflemen; Hendricks, a Pennsylvania company; Thayer commanded one from Rhode Island, and, like Arnold, Meigs, Dearborn, Henry, Senter, and Melvin, left a journal of the expedition. Aaron Burr, then but nineteen years old, and his friend Matthias Ogden, carrying muskets and knapsacks, joined as volunteers. Samuel Spring attended as chaplain.

The instructions given to Arnold had for their motive affectionate co-operation with the Canadians. They enjoined respect for the rights of property and the freedom of conscience, "ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to him only in this case they are answerable." "Should Chatham's son fall into your power," wrote Washington, "you cannot pay too much honor to the son of so illustrious a character, and so true a friend to America." Chatham, from his fixed opinion of the war, desired to withdraw his son from the service; and Carleton, anticipating that wish, had already sent him home as bearer of despatches. To the Canadians Washington's words were: "The cause of America and of liberty is the cause of every American whatever may be his religion or his descent. Come, then, range yourselves under the standard of general liberty.'

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Boats and provisions having been collected, the detachment, on the evening of the nineteenth of September, sailed from Newburyport, and the next morning entered the Kennebec. Passing above the bay where that river is met by the Androscoggin, they halted at Fort Western, which consisted of two block-houses, and one large house, enclosed with pickets, hard by the east bank of the river, on the site of Augusta. The detachment followed in four divisions, in as many successive days. Each division took provisions for forty-five days. On the twenty-fifth, Morgan and the riflemen were sent first to clear the path; Greene and Bigelow followed with three companies of musketeers; Meigs with four more went next; Enos with three companies closed the rear.

They ascended the river slowly to Fort Halifax, opposite Waterville; daily to their waists in water, hauling their boats

against a very rapid current. On the fourth of October they passed the vestiges of an Indian chapel, a fort, and the grave of the missionary Rasles. After they took leave of settlements and houses at Norridgewock, their course lay up the swift Kennebec, which flowed through the thickly forested and almost trackless wild; now rowing, now dragging their boats, now bearing them on their shoulders round rapids and cataracts, across morasses, over craggy highlands. On the tenth the party reached the dividing ridge between the Kennebec and Dead river. An advance party of seven men marked the shortest carrying-place from the Kennebec to the Dead river by snagging the bushes and blazing the trees. Their way stretched through forests of pine, balsam fir, cedar, cypress, hemlock, and yellow birch, and over three ponds, that lay hid among the trees and were full of trout. After passing them, they had no choice but to carry their boats, baggage, stores, and ammunition across a swamp, which was overgrown with bushes and white moss, often sinking knee deep in the wet turf. From Dead river, Arnold on the thirteenth wrote to the commander of the northern army, announcing his plan of co-operation. Of his friends in Quebec he inquired what ships were there, what number of troops, and what was the disposition of the Canadians and merchants; and he rashly made an Indian the bearer of his letters.

Following the Dead river eighty-three miles, encountering near its source a series of small ponds choked with fallen trees, and afterward seventeen portages, in ten or twelve days more the main body arrived at the great carrying-place to the Chaudière. On the way they heard that Enos, who commanded the rear, had, without any justification from his orders, led back his three companies to Cambridge.

The mountains had been clad in snow since September; winter was howling around them, and their course was still to the north. On the night preceding the twenty-eighth of October some of the party encamped on the summits from which the waters flow to the St. Lawrence. As they advanced, their sufferings increased. Some went barefoot for days together. Their path was shagged with thorns; their clothes had become so torn they were almost naked; at night they had no couch

or cover but branches of evergreens. Often for successive days and nights they were exposed to drenching storms, and had to cross torrents that were swelling with the rain. Their provisions failed, so that they even eat the dogs that followed them. Many a man, struggling to march on, stiffened with cold and death. Here and there a helpless invalid was left behind, with perhaps a soldier to hunt for a red squirrel, a jay, or a hawk, or gather roots and plants for his food, and watch his expiring breath. On Dead river, Macleland, the lieutenant of Hendricks's company, was suffering from inflammation of the lungs; his friends tenderly carried him on a litter across the mountain, Hendricks in his turn putting his shoulder to the burden.

The men had hauled their barges up stream nearly all the way for one hundred and eighty miles, had carried them nearly forty miles, through hideous woods and mountains, over swamps, which they were obliged to cross three or four times to fetch their baggage; yet starving, and with uncertainty ahead, officers and men pushed on with invincible fortitude.

In the too great eagerness to descend the rocky channel of the Chaudière, three of their boats, laden with ammunition and precious stores, which had been brought along with so much toil, were overset in the whirls of the stream. On the second of November, French Canadians came up with two horses, driving before them five oxen, at which the party fired a salute, and laughed with frantic delight. On the fourth, about an hour before noon, they descried a house at Sertigan, twenty-five leagues from Quebec, near the fork of the Chaudière and the Du Loup. It was the first they had seen for thirty-one days; and never could the view of cultivated fields or flourishing cities awaken such ecstasy of gladness as this rude hovel on the edge of the wilderness. Macleland was brought down to its shelter, though he breathed his farewell to the world the day after his arrival.

The party followed the winding river to the parish of St. Mary, straggling through a flat and rich country, which had for its ornament low, bright, whitewashed houses, the comfortable abodes of a cheerful and hospitable people. Here and there along the road chapels met their eyes, and images