ulars in bateaux, and proceeded on his northern way till, on the
evening of the twelfth, a head-wind began to blow, and, rising to a
storm, drove him for shelter into Ligonier Bay, on the west side of the
lake.[749] On the thirteenth, it blew a gale. The lake raged like an
angry sea, and the frail bateaux, fit only for smooth water, could not
have lived a moment. Through all the next night the gale continued, with
floods of driving rain. "I hope it will soon change," wrote Amherst on
the fifteenth, "for I have no time to lose." He was right. He had waited
till the season of autumnal storms, when nature was more dangerous than
man. On the sixteenth there was frost, and the wind did not abate. On
the next morning it shifted to the south, but soon turned back with
violence to the north, and the ruffled lake put on a look of winter,
"which determined me," says the General, "not to lose time by striving
to get to the Isle-aux-Noix, where I should arrive too late to force the
enemy from their post, but to return to Crown Point and complete the
works there." This he did, and spent the remnant of the season in the
congenial task of finishing the fort, of which the massive remains still
bear witness to his industry.

[Footnote 749: _Orderly Book of Commissary Wilson_.]

When Levis heard that the English army had fallen back, he wrote, well
pleased, to Bourlamaque: "I don't know how General Amherst will excuse
himself to his Court, but I am very glad he let us alone, because the
Canadians are so backward that you could count on nobody but the
regulars."[750]

[Footnote 750: _Levis a Bourlamaque, 1 Nov. 1759._]

Concerning this year's operations on the Lakes, it may be observed that
the result was not what the French feared, or what the British colonists
had cause to hope. If, at the end of winter, Amherst had begun, as he
might have done, the building of armed vessels at the head of the
navigable waters of Lake Champlain, where Whitehall now stands, he would
have had a navy ready to his hand before August, and would have been
able to follow the retreating French without delay, and attack them at
Isle-aux-Noix before they had finished their fortifications. And if, at
the same time, he had directed Prideaux, instead of attacking Niagara,
to co-operate with him by descending the St. Lawrence towards Montreal,
the prospect was good that the two armies would have united at the
place, and ended the campaign by the reduction of all C