approached by way of South Bay or Wood Creek, and threatened more serious mischief.  It is surprising that some of the trains were not cut off, for the escorts were often reckless and disorderly to the last degree.  Sometimes the invaders showed great audacity.  Early in June Colonel Fitch at Albany scrawls a hasty note to Winslow:  “Friday, 11 o’clock:  Sir, about half an hour since, a party of near fifty French and Indians had the impudence to come down to the river opposite to this city and captivate two men;” and Winslow replies with equal quaintness:  “We daily discover the Indians about us; but not yet have been so happy as to obtain any of them."[394]

[Footnote 394:  Vaudreuil, in his despatch of 12 August, gives particulars of these raids, with an account of the scalps taken on each occasion.  He thought the results disappointing.]

Colonel Jonathan Bagley commanded at Fort William Henry, where gangs of men were busied under his eye in building three sloops and making several hundred whaleboats to carry the army of Ticonderoga.  The season was advancing fast, and Winslow urged him to hasten on the work; to which the humorous Bagley answered; “Shall leave no stone unturned; every wheel shall go that rum and human flesh can move."[395] A fortnight after he reports:  “I must really confess I have almost wore the men out, poor dogs.  Pray where are the committee, or what are they about?” He sent scouts to watch the enemy, with results not quite satisfactory.  “There is a vast deal of news here; every party brings abundance, but all different.”  Again, a little later:  “I constantly keep out small scouting parties to the eastward and westward of the lake, and make no discovery but the tracks of small parties who are plaguing us constantly; but what vexes me most, we can’t catch one of the sons of——.  I have sent out skulking parties some distance from the sentries in the night, to lie still in the bushes to intercept them; but the flies are so plenty, our people can’t bear them."[396] Colonel David Wooster, at Fort Edward, was no more fortunate in his attempts to take satisfaction on his midnight visitors; and reports that he has not thus far been able “to give those villains a dressing."[397] The English, however, were fast learning the art of forest war, and the partisan chief, Captain Robert Rogers, began already to be famous.  On the seventeenth of June he and his band lay hidden in the bushes within the outposts of Ticonderoga, and made a close survey of the fort and surrounding camps.[398] His report was not cheering.  Winslow’s so-called army had now grown to nearly seven thousand men; and these, it was plain, were not too many to drive the French from their stronghold.

[Footnote 395:  Bagley to Winslow, 2 July, 1756.]

[Footnote 396:  Ibid., 15 July, 1756.]

[Footnote 397:  Wooster to Winslow, 2 June, 1756.]

[Footnote 398:  Report of Rogers, 19 June, 1756. Much abridged in his published Journals.]