Notwithstanding the care taken to accomplish this march with little noise, we could not prevent some Iroquois, despatched from 30 to 40 leagues to discover our troops, seeing from the mountain tops this little naval expedition, and running to warn the first village of it; so that ;

,

the alarm spreading afterwards from village to village, these barbarians

our troops found them abandoned, and were only seen on the mountains at a distance uttering great cries and firing

some random shots at our soldiers.

Our army halting only for refreshment at all these villages, which were found void of men full of grain and provisions, expected to meet with a vigorous resistance at the last which

but

we prepared to attack in regular form, because the barbarians evinced by the great firing they made there, and the fortifications they had erected, every disposition for a desperate defence. But our people were again disappointed in their hope; for scarcely had the enemy seen the vanguard approach, when they immediately fled to the woods where night prevented our troops pursuing

them.

A triple palisade, surrounding their stronghold, twenty feet in height and

FRENCH EXPEDITIONS AGAINST THE MOHAWKS.

flanked by four bastions, their prodigious quantities of provisions and the abundant supply of

water they had provided in bark tanks to extinguish fire when necessary, afforded sufficient first resolution had been quite different from that which the terror of our A few persons whom their advanced age had arms had caused them so suddenly to adopt. prevented withdrawing from the village two days previously with all the women and children, and the remains of two or three savages of another tribe whom they had half roasted at a slow