53: Compare Massachusetts Archives, LXXVI. 81.]

After much persuasion, much feasting, and much consumption of tobacco
and brandy, four hundred Indians, Christians from the Missions and
heathen from the far west, were persuaded to go on a grand war-party
with the Canadians. Of these last there were a hundred,--a wild crew,
bedecked and bedaubed like their Indian companions. Periere, an officer
of colony regulars, had nominal command of the whole; and among the
leaders of the Canadians was the famous bushfighter, Marin. Bougainville
was also of the party. In the evening of the sixteenth they all embarked
in canoes at the French advance-post commanded by Contrecoeur, near the
present steamboat-landing, passed in the gloom under the bare steeps of
Rogers Rock, paddled a few hours, landed on the west shore, and sent
scouts to reconnoitre. These came back with their reports on the next
day, and an Indian crier called the chiefs to council. Bougainville
describes them as they stalked gravely to the place of meeting, wrapped
in colored blankets, with lances in their hands. The accomplished young
aide-de-camp studied his strange companions with an interest not unmixed
with disgust. "Of all caprice," he says, "Indian caprice is the most
capricious." They were insolent to the French, made rules for them which
they did not observe themselves, and compelled the whole party to move
when and whither they pleased. Hiding the canoes, and lying close in the
forest by day, they all held their nocturnal course southward, by the
lofty heights of Black Mountain, and among the islets of the Narrows,
till the eighteenth. That night the Indian scouts reported that they had
seen the fires of an encampment on the west shore; on which the whole
party advanced to the attack, an hour before dawn, filing silently under
the dark arches of the forest, the Indians nearly naked, and streaked
with their war-paint of vermilion and soot. When they reached the spot
they found only the smouldering fires of a deserted bivouac. Then there
was a consultation; ending, after much dispute, with the choice by the
Indians of a hundred and ten of their most active warriors to attempt
some stroke in the neighborhood of the English fort. Marin joined them
with thirty Canadians, and they set out on their errand; while the rest
encamped to await the result. At night the adventurers returned, raising
the death-cry and firing their guns; somewhat depressed by losses they
ha