llon, where the waters of Lake George pour into
Champlain. Here on a high angle between the river and the lake,
commanding all travel north and south, the French build Carillon or
Fort Ticonderoga.

{243} As for the Great Northwest, New France with her string of
posts--Frontenac, Niagara, Detroit, Michilimackinac, Kaministiquia
(Fort William), Fort Rogue (Winnipeg), Portage la Prairie--stretches
clear across to the foothills of the Rockies. The English fur traders
of Hudson Bay have, in 1754, sent Anthony Hendry up the Saskatchewan,
but when Hendry comes back with word of equestrian Indians--the
Blackfeet on horseback--and treeless plains, the English set him down
as a lying impostor. Indians on horseback! They had never seen
Indians but in canoes and on snowshoes! Hendry was dismissed as
unreliable, and no Englishman went up the Saskatchewan for another ten
years.

If the disasters of 1755 did nothing more, they at last stirred the
home governments to action. Earl Loudon is sent out in 1756 to command
the English, and to New France in May comes Louis Joseph, Marquis de
Montcalm, age forty-four, soldier, scholar, country gentleman, with a
staff composed of Chevalier de Levis, Bourlamaque, and one
Bougainville, to become famous as a navigator.

Though New France consists of a good three quarters of America, things
are in evil plight that causes Montcalm many sleepless nights.
Vaudreuil, the French governor, descendant of that Vaudreuil who long
ago set the curse of Indian warfare on the borders of New England, had
expected to be appointed chief commander of the troops and jealously
resents Montcalm's coming. With the Governor is leagued Intendant
Bigot, come up from Louisburg. Bigot is a man of sixty, of noble
birth, a favorite of the butterfly woman who rules the King of
France,--the Pompadour,--and he has come to New France to mend his
fortunes. How he planned to do it one may guess from his career at
Louisburg; but Quebec offered better field, and it was to Bigot's
interest to ply Montcalm and Vaudreuil with such tittle-tattle of
enmity as would foment jealousy, keep their attention on each other,
and their eyes off his own doings. As he had done at Louisburg, so he
now did at Quebec. The King was requisitioned for enormous sums to
strengthen the fort. Bigot's {244} ring of friends acted as
contractors. The outlay was enormous, the results trifling. "I
think," complained the King, "that Quebec must