He now gave ample
presents to his departing allies, whose chiefs he had entertained at
his own table, and to whom, says Charlevoix, he bade farewell "with
those engaging manners which he knew so well how to assume when he
wanted to gain anybody to his interest." Scarcely were they gone, when
the distant cannon of La Prairie boomed a sudden alarm.
The men whom La Plaque had seen near Lake George were a part of the
combined force of Connecticut and New York, destined to attack
Montreal. They had made their way along Wood Creek to the point where
it widens into Lake Champlain, and here they had stopped. Disputes
between the men of the two colonies, intestine quarrels in the New
York militia, who were divided between the two factions engendered by
the late revolution, the want of provisions, the want of canoes, and
the ravages of small-pox, had ruined an enterprise which had been
mismanaged from the first. There was no birch bark to make more
canoes, and owing to the lateness of the season the bark of the elms
would not peel. Such of the Iroquois as had joined them were cold and
sullen; and news came that the three western tribes of the
confederacy, terrified by the small-pox, had refused to move. It was
impossible to advance; and Winthrop, the commander, gave orders to
return to Albany, leaving Phips to conquer Canada alone.
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