
proud elevation on which it had been placed by the talents and enterprise of her
former warriors and statesmen. No longer dreaded by her enemies, her servants
were fast losing the confidence of self respect. In this mortifying abasement,
the colonists, though innocent of her imbecility, and too humble to be the
agents of her blunders, were but the natural participators. They had recently
seen a chosen army, from that country, which, reverencing as a mother, they had
blindly believed invincible - an army led by a chief who had been selected from
a crowd of trained warriors for his rare military endowments, disgracefully
routed by a handful of French and Indians, and only saved from annihilation by
the coolness and spirit of a Virginian boy, whose riper fame has since diffused
itself, with the steady influence of moral truth, to the uttermost confines of
Christendom.2 A wide frontier had been laid naked by this unexpected disaster,
and more substantial evils were preceded by a thousand fanciful and imaginary
dangers. The alarmed colonists believed that the yells of the savages mingled
with every fitful gust of wind that issued from the interminable forests of the
west. The terrific character of their merciless enemies, increased,
immeasurably, the natural horrors of warfare. Numberless recent massacres were
still vivid in their recollections; nor was there any ear, in the provinces, so
deaf as not to have drunk in with avidity the narrative of some fearful tale of
midnight murder, in which the natives of the forests were the principal and
barbarous actors. As the credulous and excited traveller related the hazardous
chances of the wilderness, the blood of the timid curdled with terror, and
mothers cast anxious glances even at those children which slumbered within the
security of the largest towns. In short, the magnifying influence of fear began
to set at nought the calculations of reason, and to render those who should have
remembered their manhood, the slaves of the basest of passions. Even the most
confident and the stoutest hearts, began to think the issue of the contest was
becoming doubtful; and that abject class was hourly increasing in numbers, who
thought they foresaw all the possessions of the English crown in America,
subdued by their Christian foes, or laid waste by the inroads of their
relentless allies.
    When, therefore, intelligence was received at the fort which covered the
southern termination of the portage between the Hudson and the lakes, that
Montcalm had been seen moving up the Champlain with an army numerous as the
leaves on the trees, its truth was admitted with more of the craven reluctance
of fear than with the stern joy that a warrior should feel, in
