e
of the funds, and Intendant Bigot has a sponge-like quality of
absorbing all funds that flow through his hands. Cannon have been
added, but there are not enough balls to go round. The walls have been
repaired, but with false filling (sand in place of mortar), so that the
first shatter of artillery will send them clattering down in wet
plaster.

Take the Ohio next.

"Beautiful River" is the highway between New France and Louisiana. By
Braddock's defeat the English have been driven out to a man. Matters
are a thousandfold worse than before, for {242} the savage allies of
the French now swarm down the bush road cut by Braddock's army and
carry bloody havoc to all the frontier settlements of Pennsylvania and
Virginia. How many pioneers perished in this border war will never be
known. It is a tale by itself, and its story is not part of Canada's
history. George Washington was the officer in charge of a thousand
bushfighters to guard this frontier.

Take the valley of Lake Champlain.

This is the highway of approach to Montreal north, to Albany south.
Johnson had defeated Dieskau here, but neither side was strong enough
to advance from the scene of battle into the territory of the enemy.
The English take possession of Lake George and intrench themselves at
the south end in Fort William Henry. Sir William Johnson strings a
line of forts up the Mohawk River towards Oswego on Lake Ontario, and
he keeps his forest rangers, under the famous scout Major Robert
Rogers, scouring the forest and mountain trails of Lake Champlain for
French marauder and news of what the French are doing. Rogers'
Rangers, too, are a story by themselves, but a story which does not
concern Canada. Skating and snowshoeing by winter, canoeing by night
in summer, Rogers passed and repassed the enemy's lines times without
number, as if his life were charmed, though once his wrist was shot
when he had nothing to stanch the blood but the ribbon tying his wig,
and once he stumbled back exhausted to Fort William Henry, to lie
raging with smallpox for the winter. Among the forest rangers of New
Hampshire and New York, Major Robert Rogers was without a peer. No
danger was too great, no feat too daring, for his band of scouts. The
English have established Fort William Henry at the south end of Lake
George. The French checkmate the move by strengthening Crown Point on
Lake Champlain and moving a pace farther south into English
territory,--to Cari