Hatts, etc." The engraving is
reproduced in the _Documentary History of New York_, IV., and
elsewhere. The _Explanation thereof_ is only to be found complete in the
original. This, as well as the anonymous _Second Letter to a Friend_,
also printed at Boston in 1755, is excellent for the information it
gives as to the condition of the ground where the conflict took place,
and the position of the combatants. The unpublished Archives of
Massachusetts; the correspondence of Sir William Johnson; the _Review of
Military Operations in North America_; Dwight, _Travels in New England
and New York_, III.; and Hoyt, _Antiquarian Researches on Indian
Wars,_--should also be mentioned. Dwight and Hoyt drew their information
from aged survivors of the battle. I have repeatedly examined the
localities.

In the odd effusion of the colonial muse called _Tilden's Poems, chiefly
to Animate and Rouse the Soldiers, printed 1756_, is a piece styled _The
Christian Hero, or New England's Triumphs_, beginning with the
invocation,--

"O Heaven, indulge my feeble Muse,
Teach her what numbers for to choose!"

and containing the following stanza:--

"Their Dieskau we from them detain,
While Canada aloud complains
And counts the numbers of their slain
and makes a dire complaint;
The Indians to their demon gods;
And with the French there's little odds,
While images receive their nods,
Invoking rotten saints."]

Chapter 10

1755, 1756

Shirley. Border War

The capture of Niagara was to finish the work of the summer. This alone
would have gained for England the control of the valley of the Ohio, and
made Braddock's expedition superfluous. One marvels at the
short-sightedness, the dissensions, the apathy which had left this key
of the interior so long in the hands of France without an effort to
wrest it from her. To master Niagara would be to cut the communications
of Canada with the whole system of French forts and settlements in the
West, and leave them to perish like limbs of a girdled tree.

Major-General Shirley, in the flush of his new martial honors, was to
try his prentice hand at the work. The lawyer-soldier could plan a
campaign boldly and well. It remained to see how he would do his part
towards executing it. In July he arrived at Albany, the starting-point
of his own expedition as well as that of Johnson. This little Dutch city
was an outpost of civilization. The Huds