eat trees, entire as yet, were flung by
age or storms athwart the current,--a bristling barricade of matted
boughs. There was work for the axe as well as for the oar; till at
length Lake Oneida opened before them, and they rowed all day over its
sunny breast, reached the outlet, and drifted down the shallow eddies of
the Onondaga, between walls of verdure, silent as death, yet haunted
everywhere with ambushed danger. It was twenty days after leaving
Schenectady when they neared the mouth of the river; and Lake Ontario
greeted them, stretched like a sea to the pale brink of the northern
sky, while on the bare hill at their left stood the miserable little
fort of Oswego.

Shirley's whole force soon arrived; but not the needful provisions and
stores. The machinery of transportation and the commissariat was in the
bewildered state inevitable among a peaceful people at the beginning of
a war; while the news of Braddock's defeat produced such an effect on
the boatmen and the draymen at the carrying-places, that the greater
part deserted. Along with these disheartening tidings, Shirley learned
the death of his eldest son, killed at the side of Braddock. He had with
him a second son, Captain John Shirley, a vivacious young man, whom his
father and his father's friends in their familiar correspondence always
called "Jack." John Shirley's letters give a lively view of the
situation.

"I have sat down to write to you,"--thus he addresses Governor Morris,
of Pennsylvania, who seems to have had a great liking for him,--"because
there is an opportunity of sending you a few lines; and if you will
promise to excuse blots, interlineations, and grease (for this is
written in the open air, upon the head of a pork-barrel, and twenty
people about me), I will begin another half-sheet. We are not more than
about fifteen hundred men fit for duty; but that I am pretty sure, if we
can go in time in our sloop, schooner, row-galleys, and whaleboats, will
be sufficient to take Frontenac; after which we may venture to go upon
the attack of Niagara, but not before. I have not the least doubt with
myself of knocking down both these places yet this fall, if we can get
away in a week. If we take or destroy their two vessels at Frontenac,
and ruin their harbor there, and destroy the two forts of that and
Niagara, I shall think we have done great things. Nobody holds it out
better than my father and myself. We shall all of us relish a good house
over ou