the overworked surgeon sent the dismal
tidings to his wife: "My dear brother Ephraim was killed by a ball
through his head; poor brother Josiah's wound I fear will prove mortal;
poor Captain Hawley is yet alive, though I did not think he would live
two hours after bringing him in." Daniel Pomeroy was shot dead; and his
brother Seth wrote the news to his wife Rachel, who was just delivered
of a child: "Dear Sister, this brings heavy tidings; but let not your
heart sink at the news, though it be your loss of a dear husband. Monday
the eighth instant was a memorable day; and truly you may say, had not
the Lord been on our side, we must all have been swallowed up. My
brother, being one that went out in the first engagement, received a
fatal shot through the middle of the head." Seth Pomeroy found a moment
to write also to his own wife, whom he tells that another attack is
expected; adding, in quaintly pious phrase: "But as God hath begun to
show mercy, I hope he will go on to be gracious." Pomeroy was employed
during the next few days with four hundred men in what he calls "the
melancholy piece of business" of burying the dead. A letter-writer of
the time does not approve what was done on this occasion. "Our people,"
he says, "not only buried the French dead, but buried as many of them as
might be without the knowledge of our Indians, to prevent their being
scalped. This I call an excess of civility;" his reason being that
Braddock's dead soldiers had been left to the wolves.

The English loss in killed, wounded, and missing was two hundred and
sixty-two;[315] and that of the French by their own account, two hundred
and twenty-eight,[316]--a somewhat modest result of five hours'
fighting. The English loss was chiefly in the ambush of the morning,
where the killed greatly outnumbered the wounded, because those who fell
and could not be carried away were tomahawked by Dieskau's Indians. In
the fight at the camp, both Indians and Canadians kept themselves so
well under cover that it was very difficult for the New England men to
pick them off, while they on their part lay close behind their row of
logs. On the French side, the regular officers and troops bore the brunt
of the battle and suffered the chief loss, nearly all of the former and
nearly half of the latter being killed or wounded.

[Footnote 315: _Return of Killed, Wounded, and Missing at the Battle of
Lake George_.]

[Footnote 316: _Doreil au Ministre, 20 Oct. 1755