long confinement of the
English in their fort. Indeed, a crowd of men, penned up through the
heats of midsummer in a palisaded camp, ill-ordered and unclean as the
camps of the raw provincials usually were, and infested with pestiferous
swarms of flies and mosquitoes, could hardly have remained in health.
Whatever its cause, the disease, which seems to have been a malignant
dysentery, made more havoc than the musket and the sword. A party of
French who came to the spot late in the autumn, found it filled with
innumerable graves.

The British squadron, with the five regiments on board, was to have
reached Boston at the middle of May. On the twentieth of that month the
whole contingent of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island was
encamped by Boston harbor, with transports and stores, ready to embark
for Quebec at ten hours' notice.[133] When Vetch, after seeing
everything in readiness at New York, returned to Boston on the third of
July, he found the New England levies encamped there still, drilled
diligently every day by officers whom he had brought from England for
the purpose. "The bodies of the men," he writes to Lord Sunderland, "are
in general better than in Europe, and I hope their courage will prove so
too; so that nothing in human probability can prevent the success of
this glorious enterprise but the too late arrival of the fleet."[134]
But of the fleet there was no sign. "The government here is put to vast
expense," pursues Vetch, "but they cheerfully pay it, in hopes of being
freed from it forever hereafter. All that they can do now is to fast and
pray for the safe and speedy arrival of the fleet, for which they have
already had two public fast-days kept."

If it should not come in time, he continues, "it would be the last
disappointment to her Majesty's colonies, who have so heartily complied
with her royal order, and would render them much more miserable than if
such a thing had never been undertaken." Time passed, and no ships
appeared. Vetch wrote again: "I shall only presume to acquaint your
Lordship how vastly uneasy all her Majesty's loyall subjects here on
this continent are. Pray God hasten the fleet."[135] Dudley, scarcely
less impatient, wrote to the same effect. It was all in vain, and the
soldiers remained in their camp, monotonously drilling day after day
through all the summer and half the autumn. At length, on the eleventh
of October, Dudley received a letter from Lord Sunderland, in