The purpose of France was now to make good her claim to the whole
vast West. It was a picturesque company which pushed its canoes
from the shore at Lachine on the 15th of June, six days before
the British squadron reached Halifax. There was a procession of
twenty-three great birchbark canoes well filled, for in them were
more than two hundred men, at least ten in each canoe, together
with the necessary impedimenta for a long journey. There were
twenty soldiers in uniform, a hundred and eighty Canadians
skilled in paddling and in carrying canoes and freight over the
portages, a band of Indians, and fourteen officers with Celoron
de Blainville at their head.
The acting Governor of Canada at this time was a dwarf in
physique, but a giant in intellect, the brilliant naval officer,
the Marquis de la Galissoniere, destined later to inflict upon
the English in the Mediterranean the naval defeat which caused
the execution of Admiral Byng as a coward. This remarkable
man--planning, like his predecessor Frontenac, on a scale suited
to world politics--saw that the peace of 1748 settled nothing,
that in the balance now was the whole future of North America,
and that victory would be to the alert and the strong.
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