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When everything reached Oswego, all hands turned to, to equip some lake craft that had been bought for the service. These were schooners, salt droggers, of about sixty or eighty tons. All we did at Oswego, however, was to load these vessels, some six or eight in all, and put to sea. I went off in one of the first, a vessel called the Fair American.
A third body of troops which was to be stationed on the Mohawk during the winter and to be powerfully reinforced in the spring, was to seize Oswego and to secure the navigation of Lake Ontario with vessels to be constructed of materials to be procured in the winter. A fourth corps was to penetrate into Canada by the St.
He did not know it then, but learned afterward that these despatches made clear the weakness of Oswego, Rochester, and Sackett's Harbour, their urgent need of help, and gave the whole plan for an American counter attack on Montreal. But he knew they were valuable, and they must at once be taken to General Hampton.
He had with him between five and six thousand troops of New York and New England, and a host of Mohawk warriors, loyally devoted to him. It so happened that a French force of upwards of three thousand men, under the Baron de Dieskau, an old general of high reputation, had recently arrived at Quebec, destined against Oswego.
As for Jasper, he would sooner go over the Oswego Falls, without a looker-on, than do it before a hundred pair of eyes. I know the lad well from much consorting, and I am sure he is not boastful or vainglorious."
Thus far he had attracted but two Iroquois to his new establishment; and these he lent to Céloron. Reaching Lake Ontario, the party stopped for a time at the French fort of Frontenac, but avoided the rival English post of Oswego, on the southern shore, where a trade in beaver skins, disastrous to French interests, was carried on, and whither many tribes, once faithful to Canada, now made resort.
If that chair could only speak, what a tale it could tell of the men who have sat there and told their life stories! I asked him how he came to be there, and he told me the same old story that can be summed up in one word drink! He came from up the State, at one time owned a farm outside of Oswego, and was living happily. He was a church member and bore a good name.
"I beg your pardon, mademoiselle," said he, at last, but not without difficulty, "I have just come from Oswego." "Indeed! Then you have passed through Montreal. Perhaps you have seen my father? He is very intimate with Monsieur de Valricour, who, I believe, is your uncle."
He will observe them in their hours of leisure, when, attired in their national costume, consisting of white duck breeches, banjos, and striped shirts with high collars, they gather beneath the rays of the silvery Southern moon to sing their tribal melodies on the melon-lined shores of the old Oswego; and by day he will study them at their customary employment as they climb from limb to limb of the cottonwood trees, picking cotton.
Yet Lake Ontario affords great advantages to both Canada and the United States. The former has the large towns of Hamilton, Toronto, and Kingston on its shores, with the exporting places of Oakville, Credit, and Cobourg. The important towns of Oswego and Rochester, with smaller ones too numerous to name, are on the American side.
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