ment now resolved on an expedition against Norridgewock, and entrusted it to Captains Moulton and Harman, of York. At the head of 100 men, these officers surprised the village, killed the Jesuit, and about 80 of the Indians, recovered three captives, destroyed the chapel, and brought away the plate and furniture of the altar as trophies. In the course of the year 1725, Captain John Lovewell was very successful in his operations against the Abenaquis; but at length he and the greater portion of his men fell into an ambuscade and were killed. In this expedition the famous chief Paugus was killed by Mr. Chamberlin. A treaty of peace was concluded soon after, and was faithfully observed by the Indians.

N March, 1744, Great Britain declared war against France. Before this was known at Boston, M. Du Quesnel, governor of Cape Breton, sent about 900 men, under Duvivier, against Canso, Maine. The place was surprised and burned, and the garrison, numbering 80 men, made prisoners. To guard against the incursions. of the French and Indians, 500 men were impressed, of which, 300 were for the eastern frontier, and 200 for the western. The ordinary garrisons were reinforced, and ammunition distributed to the several townships.

After the peace of Utrecht, the French had built and strongly fortified the town of Louisbourg, on the Island of Cape Breton. The place was deemed so strong as to be termed the Dunkirk of America. Its reduction was for many reasons an important object to New England.

Early in January, 1745, Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, formed a plan for its capture; it met the approval of the general court, and forces were immediately collected for its execution. William Pepperell, of Kittery, was appointed commander of the expedition, and sailing to Canso, he found the colonial troops, amounting to 4000 men, ready for action. They were detained at that place about three weeks, when Commodore Warren, with an English fleet, arrived, and the whole force proceeded to Louisbourg, where it arrived on the 30th of April. The town was invested and the siege prosecuted with extraordinary vigor. Duchambon, the French commander, refused to surrender, until the fire of the English had become very destructive, and the garrison mutinous, and having no hope of being relieved he signed the articles of capitulation on the 16th of June. This successful expedition displayed the enterprising character of the New England colonists, and gave them a degree of confidence in their own powers which afterwards proved of service to them. But it also excited the envy and jealousy of the mother country, which no sense of the value of the conquest could allay.

OVERNOR SHIRLEY now determined to attempt the conquest of all Canada. He had matured a plan for that purpose, and went to Louisbourg to consult Sir Peter Warren and Sir William Pepperell, concerning its execution. The British ministry was earnestly entreated to furnish a portion of the necessary means, and consented. The colonial quotas of troops were raised, but the English general who was to command them, did not arrive during the summer. On the presumption that no English fleet could be expected to arrive, as the season was far advanced, it was resolved to employ the troops in an attack upon Crown Point and Montreal. While preparations were making for this newly projected enterprise, the whole country was thrown into consternation by the intelligence that a formidable French armament was about to visit the coast of New England. A large fleet, under command of D'Arville had arrived at Nova Scotia. It consisted of about 40 ships of war, besides transports, and brought over 3000 regular troops, with veteran officers and all kinds of military stores. In a few days, 6400 militia marched to Boston, and 6000 more were promised from Connecticut. The old forts were repaired, and new ones erected. The whole country of New England was in a state of alarm and anxiety, when intelligence was received that the French fleet had been disabled by a storm, and soon after it was joyfully proclaimed that the expedition had been abandoned. A series of disasters, including the suicide of two commanders, the Duke D'Arville and D'Esternelle, compelled the French to return home. A more remarkable instance of the interference of circumstances beyond the power of human control has seldom occurred.

The Indians committed their usual depredations in various quarters. during 1747; but several of their attacks were bravely repulsed by the settlers on the frontier. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed on the 7th of October, 1748, was joyfully welcomed by the colonists. By this treaty, Cape Breton was restored to the French, but the English retained Nova Scotia.

Washington writing the Journal of his Expedition to the French Posts on the Ohio.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR.

E now find events tending towards a final struggle for supremacy in America, between France and England. Even before the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the French engaged in the execution of measures which could not but result in a renewal of the war. These consisted in founding settlements where a collision with the progress of the English could not be avoided, and when they knew their title to the land could never be recognised by the English with consistency.

We have remarked various disputes that were engendered between the several English provinces by the vague and inconsistent definitions of territory contained in their charters; and when such collisions occurred between members of the same common empire, it is not wonderful that they sprang up and were maintained with greater keenness and obstinacy between two nations long accustomed to regard each other with sentiments of rivalry and dislike. Yet, with the amplest allowance for these considerations, we should postpone substantial truth to fanciful candor and affected impartiality, in hesitating to pronounce that the obstructions to an amicable issue of the controversy were not only magnified, but ren

dered absolutely insuperable, by the disregard of honor, good faith, and moderation, with which the pretensions of France were advocated. The policy which had been exemplified by the French colonists in America was now espoused and defended by the French politicians in Europe. Not only did the commissaries on behalf of France reject the authority of maps which had been published and revised by the ministers of their own country, but they refused to abide by the definition of the boundaries of Nova Scotia for which the French cabinet formerly contended, when the region designated by this name was acknowledged to form a part of the dominion of France.

EANWHILE, in addition to the previous controversies and the increasing hopelessness of a peaceful adjustment of them, new subjects of dispute arose between the two nations. The extension of the Virginian settlements to the banks of the river Ohio, and especially the occupation of a part of this region by the English Ohio Company, were calculated to bring to a decisive test the long prevalent suspicion of the purpose of the French to render the line of forts which they had been erecting subservient not merely to the communication between their own colonies, but to the confinement of the British settlement, and the obstruction of their advances into the interior of the country. Nor did the French hesitate a moment to afford unequivocal proof of their entire purpose, and to resist the first attempt of their rivals to overleap the boundaries within which they were resolved to enclose them. A menace of the governor of Canada, that he would treat as enemies any of the subjects of Britain who should settle near the Ohio, or presume even to trade with the Indian inhabitants of this region, having been disregarded, was promptly enforced by the seizure of a number of British traders, who were carried as prisoners to a fort which the French were erecting at Presque Isle on Lake Erie. Other British traders, and servants of the Ohio Company, retreated in alarm from the stations which they had begun to occupy; and the French perceiving the critical juncture was come, when their ambitious system of policy, now plainly disclosed, must either be defended by force or completely abandoned, proceeded with augmented diligence to supply whatever was yet defective in its subsidiary arrangements and preparations. A fort was built at Niagara, within the dominions of the Indian allies of Britain; and, in addition to the fort on Lake Erie, two others were built at commanding positions on the banks. of the Ohio. Thus at length the French succeeded in completing their long-projected communication between the mouth of the Mississippi and the river St. Lawrence.