were fishing for cod and eating it.  The taste is exquisite.  The head, tongue, and liver are morsels worthy of an epicure.  Still, I would not advise anybody to make the voyage for their sake.  My health is as good as it has been for a long time.  I found it a good plan to eat little and take no supper; a little tea now and then, and plenty of lemonade.  Nevertheless I have taken very little liking for the sea, and think that when I shall be so happy as to rejoin you I shall end my voyages there.  I don’t know when this letter will go.  I shall send it by the first ship that returns to France, and keep on writing till then.  It is pleasant, I know, to hear particulars about the people one loves, and I thought that my mother and you, my dearest and most beloved, would be glad to read all these dull details.  We heard Mass on Easter Day.  All the week before, it was impossible, because the ship rolled so that I could hardly keep my legs.  If I had dared, I think I should have had myself lashed fast.  I shall not soon forget that Holy Week.”

This letter was written on the eleventh of May, in the St. Lawrence, where the ship lay at anchor, ten leagues below Quebec, stopped by ice from proceeding farther.  Montcalm made his way to the town by land, and soon after learned with great satisfaction that the other ships were safe in the river below.  “I see,” he writes again, “that I shall have plenty of work.  Our campaign will soon begin.  Everything is in motion.  Don’t expect details about our operations; generals never speak of movements till they are over.  I can only tell you that the winter has been quiet enough, though the savages have made great havoc in Pennsylvania and Virginia, and carried off, according to their custom, men, women, and children.  I beg you will have High Mass said at Montpellier or Vauvert to thank God for our safe arrival and ask for good success in future."[365]

[Footnote 365:  These extracts are translated from copies of the original letters, in possession of the present Marquis de Montcalm.]

Vaudreuil, the governor-general, was at Montreal, and Montcalm sent a courier to inform him of his arrival.  He soon went thither in person, and the two men met for the first time.  The new general was not welcome to Vaudreuil, who had hoped to command the troops himself, and had represented to the Court that it was needless and inexpedient to send out a general officer from France.[366] The Court had not accepted his views;[367] and hence it was with more curiosity than satisfaction that he greeted the colleague who had been assigned him.  He saw before him a man of small stature, with a lively countenance, a keen eye, and, in moments of animation, rapid, vehement utterance, and nervous gesticulation.  Montcalm, we may suppose, regarded the Governor with no less attention.  Pierre Francois Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, who had governed Canada early in the century; and he himself had been governor of Louisiana.  He had not the force of character