ed in barracks, but the officers
were left to find lodging for themselves. Loudon demanded that provision
should be made for them also. The city council hesitated, afraid of
incensing the people if they complied. Cruger, the mayor, came to
remonstrate. "God damn my blood!" replied the Earl; "if you do not
billet my officers upon free quarters this day, I'll order here all the
troops in North America, and billet them myself upon this city." Being
no respecter of persons, at least in the provinces, he began with Oliver
Delancey, brother of the late acting Governor, and sent six soldiers to
lodge under his roof. Delancey swore at the unwelcome guests, on which
Loudon sent him six more. A subscription was then raised among the
citizens, and the required quarters were provided.[467] In Boston there
was for the present less trouble. The troops were lodged in the barracks
of Castle William, and furnished with blankets, cooking utensils, and
other necessaries.[468]

[Footnote 467: Smith, _Hist. of N.Y._, Part II. 242. _William Carry to
Johnson, 15 Jan. 1757_, in Stone, _Life of Sir William Johnson_, II. 24,
_note. Loudon to Hardy, 21 Nov. 1756._]

[Footnote 468: Massachusetts Archives, LXXVI. 153.]

Major Eyre and his soldiers, in their wilderness exile by the borders of
Lake George, whiled the winter away with few other excitements than the
evening howl of wolves from the frozen mountains, or some nocturnal
savage shooting at a sentinel from behind a stump on the moonlit fields
of snow. A livelier incident at last broke the monotony of their lives.
In the middle of January Rogers came with his rangers from Fort Edward,
bound on a scouting party towards Crown Point. They spent two days at
Fort William Henry in making snow-shoes and other preparation, and set
out on the seventeenth. Captain Spikeman was second in command, with
Lieutenants Stark and Kennedy, several other subalterns, and two
gentlemen volunteers enamoured of adventure. They marched down the
frozen lake and encamped at the Narrows. Some of them, unaccustomed to
snow-shoes, had become unfit for travel, and were sent back, thus
reducing the number to seventy-four. In the morning they marched again,
by icicled rocks and ice-bound waterfalls, mountains gray with naked
woods and fir-trees bowed down with snow. On the nineteenth they reached
the west shore, about four miles south of Rogers Rock, marched west of
north eight miles, and bivouacked among the mountains. On