as a felon and a traitor. In the mean time Montgomery
had detached three hundred men with two six-pounders to reduce Fort
Chamblee, situate on the tributary river Sorel, about five miles above
Fort St. John. His principal object in advancing against this fort was
to obtain sufficient ammunition wherewith to reduce that of St. John,
and he succeeded to his utmost wishes. The fort was reduced, and
Montgomery found plenty of ball, powder, cartridges, and arms in it, and
he then pressed the siege of St. John's with great vigour. The garrison
offered a brave resistance, but it was all in vain: the fort was
surrendered, and Montgomery dashed across the river and entered Montreal
without opposition. As this town carried on an extensive trade, the
American troops obtained a good supply of proper clothing, after which
their commander, having secured the goodwill of the inhabitants by his
liberal treatment of them, resolved to advance upon Quebec, the capital
of the province. He carried out his resolution, although his volunteers,
anxious to get back to their fire-sides, quitted his ranks by hundreds,
and he had to leave a garrison in Montreal, so that when he put his
men in marching order his force did not exceed four hundred men. But
Montgomery hoped to meet Arnold under the walls of Quebec, and nothing
daunted by the desertion of his soldiers, and the smallness of his
force, he began to descend the St. Lawrence.

In the meantime Arnold had been entrusted with the execution of a daring
plan of his own forming. At the head of 1200 men, consisting chiefly of
New Englanders, he traversed the inhospitable deserts of the northern
states into Canada; deserts which had never previously been trodden by
the foot of a white man. Owing to the obstacles he encountered in his
dreary journey, he did not reach the first Canadian settlements on the
river Chaudiere, which flows into the St. Lawrence, until the 3rd of
November. On arriving there his troops were famished, having been long
subjected to hunger, and reduced even to the necessity of eating the
leather of their shoes. The first step of Arnold was, therefore, to
divide them into separate companies, each of which ran off as fast as it
could to obtain food, shelter, and rest in the vicinity of the mouth of
the Chaudiere. Arnold himself rested for two or three days at a small
village, in order to circulate the manifestoes he had brought with him,
and to allow his rear and stragglers to ar