victories over which posterity will never boast, which no writer dare
describe in all the detail of their horrors, and which leave a black
blot on the escutcheon of Canada.

It was hardly to be expected that the New England colonies would let
such raids pass unpunished. The destruction of Schenectady had been
bad enough. The massacre of Salmon Falls caused the New Englanders to
forget their jealousies for the once and to unite in a common cause.
All the colonies agreed {176} to contribute men, ships, and money to
invade New France by land and sea. The land forces were placed under
Winthrop and Schuyler; but as smallpox disorganized the expedition
before it reached Lake Champlain, the attack by land had little other
effect than to draw Frontenac from Quebec down to Montreal, where
Captain Schuyler, with Dutch bushmen, succeeded in ravaging the
settlements and killing at least twenty French.

The expedition by sea was placed under Sir William Phips of
Massachusetts,--a man who was the very antipodes of Frontenac. One of
a poor family of twenty-six children, Phips had risen from being a
shepherd boy in Maine to the position of ship's carpenter in Boston.
Here, among the harbor folk, he got wind of a Spanish treasure ship
containing a million and a half dollars' worth of gold, which had been
sunk off the West Indies. Going to England, Phips succeeded in
interesting that same clique of courtiers who helped Radisson to
establish the Hudson's Bay Company,--Albemarle and Prince Rupert and
the King; and when, with the funds which they advanced, Phips succeeded
in raising the treasure vessel, he received, in addition to his share
of the booty, a title and the appointment as governor of Massachusetts.

[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM PHIPS]

Here, then, was the daring leader chosen to invade New France. Phips
sailed first for Port Royal, which had in late years become infested
with French pirates, preying on Boston commerce. Word had just come of
the fearful massacres of {177} colonists at Portland. Boston was
inflamed with a spirit of vengeance. The people had appointed days of
fasting and prayer to invoke Heaven's blessing on their war. When
Phips sailed into Annapolis Basin with his vessels and seven hundred
men in the month of May, he found the French commander, Meneval, ill of
the gout, with a garrison of about eighty soldiers, but all the cannon
chanced to be dismounted. The odds against the French did not permi