chap. XVI.} 1760. |
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site connected by rivers and lakes with an inland
world, and needing only a somewhat milder climate to be one of the most attractive spots on the continent.
The capitulation included all Canada, which was said to extend to the crest of land dividing branches of Erie and Michigan from those of the Miami, the Wabash, and the Illinois rivers.
Property and religion were cared for in the terms; but for civil liberty no stipulation was even thought of. Thus Canada, under the forms of a despotic administration, came into the possession of England by conquest; and in a conquered country the law was held to be the pleasure of the king.
On the fifth day after the capitulation, Rogers departed with two hundred rangers to carry English banners to the upper posts.1 At Frontenac, now Kingston, an Indian hunting-party brought them wild fowl and venison.
At Niagara, they provided themselves with the fit costume of the wilderness.
From Erie in the chilly days of November they went forward in boats, being the first considerable party of men whose tongue was the English that ever spread sails on Lake Erie or swept it with their oars.
The Indians on the Lakes were at peace, united under Pontiac, the great chief of the Ottawas, happy in a country fruitful of corn and abounding in game.
As the Americans advanced triumphantly towards the realms where the native huntsman had chased the deer through the unbroken woodlands, they were met at the mouth of a river2 by a deputation of Ottawas
2 Rogers: Concise Account of North America, 240. Rogers: Journal, 214. The River was not the Cuyahoga, but one forty-six miles to the eastward of the river then called the Elk, and one hundred nine and a half miles to the eastward from Sandusky Bay. Howe's Ohio, 125. See the maps of Evans, 1755, and of T. Pownall, 1776. On parting from Pontiac, Rogers says he kept a southwesterly course for about forty-eight miles; which could not be done by a vessel sailing from Cleveland to Sandusky. Rogers seems not accurate, though professing to be so to the half or the quarter of a mile. The distances appear to refer to the Ashtabula River; the name Chogage to the Geauga.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
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