to strengthen Fort Ontario as much as he possibly could."
_Shirley to Loudon, 4 Sept. 1756._]

[Footnote 439: _Works of Franklin_, I. 220.]

Loudon had now about ten thousand men at his command, though not all fit
for duty. They were posted from Albany to Lake George. The Earl himself
was at Fort Edward, while about three thousand of the provincials still
lay, under Winslow, at the lake. Montcalm faced them at Ticonderoga,
with five thousand three hundred regulars and Canadians, in a position
where they could defy three times their number.[440] "The sons of Belial
are too strong for me," jocosely wrote Winslow;[441] and he set himself
to intrenching his camp; then had the forest cut down for the space of a
mile from the lake to the mountains, so that the trees, lying in what he
calls a "promiscuous manner," formed an almost impenetrable abatis. An
escaped prisoner told him that the French were coming to visit him with
fourteen thousand men;[442] but Montcalm thought no more of stirring
than Loudon himself; and each stood watching the other, with the lake
between them, till the season closed.

[Footnote 440: "Nous sommes tant a Carillon qu'aux postes avances 5,300
hommes." Bougainville, _Journal_.]

[Footnote 441: _Winslow to Loudon, 29 Sept. 1756_.]

[Footnote 442: _Examination of Sergeant James Archibald_.]

Meanwhile the western borders were still ravaged by the tomahawk. New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia all writhed under
the infliction. Each had made a chain of blockhouses and wooden forts to
cover its frontier, and manned them with disorderly bands, lawless, and
almost beyond control.[443] The case was at the worst in Pennsylvania,
where the tedious quarrelling of Governor and Assembly, joined to the
doggedly pacific attitude of the Quakers, made vigorous defence
impossible. Rewards were offered for prisoners and scalps, so bountiful
that the hunting of men would have been a profitable vocation, but for
the extreme wariness and agility of the game.[444] Some of the forts
were well built stockades; others were almost worthless; but the enemy
rarely molested even the feeblest of them, preferring to ravage the
lonely and unprotected farms. There were two or three exceptions. A
Virginian fort was attacked by a war-party under an officer named
Douville, who was killed, and his followers were put to flight.[445] The
assailants were more fortunate at a small stockade called Fort
Granville, o