In New York the privates were quartered in barracks, but the officers were left to find lodging for themselves.  Loudon demanded that provision should be made for them also.  The city council hesitated, afraid of incensing the people if they complied.  Cruger, the mayor, came to remonstrate.  “God damn my blood!” replied the Earl; “if you do not billet my officers upon free quarters this day, I’ll order here all the troops in North America, and billet them myself upon this city.”  Being no respecter of persons, at least in the provinces, he began with Oliver Delancey, brother of the late acting Governor, and sent six soldiers to lodge under his roof.  Delancey swore at the unwelcome guests, on which Loudon sent him six more.  A subscription was then raised among the citizens, and the required quarters were provided.[467] In Boston there was for the present less trouble.  The troops were lodged in the barracks of Castle William, and furnished with blankets, cooking utensils, and other necessaries.[468]

[Footnote 467:  Smith, Hist. of N.Y., Part II. 242. William Carry to Johnson, 15 Jan. 1757, in Stone, Life of Sir William Johnson, II. 24, note.  Loudon to Hardy, 21 Nov. 1756.]

[Footnote 468:  Massachusetts Archives, LXXVI. 153.]

Major Eyre and his soldiers, in their wilderness exile by the borders of Lake George, whiled the winter away with few other excitements than the evening howl of wolves from the frozen mountains, or some nocturnal savage shooting at a sentinel from behind a stump on the moonlit fields of snow.  A livelier incident at last broke the monotony of their lives.  In the middle of January Rogers came with his rangers from Fort Edward, bound on a scouting party towards Crown Point.  They spent two days at Fort William Henry in making snow-shoes and other preparation, and set out on the seventeenth.  Captain Spikeman was second in command, with Lieutenants Stark and Kennedy, several other subalterns, and two gentlemen volunteers enamoured of adventure.  They marched down the frozen lake and encamped at the Narrows.  Some of them, unaccustomed to snow-shoes, had become unfit for travel, and were sent back, thus reducing the number to seventy-four.  In the morning they marched again, by icicled rocks and ice-bound waterfalls, mountains gray with naked woods and fir-trees bowed down with snow.  On the nineteenth they reached the west shore, about four miles south of Rogers Rock, marched west of north eight miles, and bivouacked among the mountains.  On the next morning they changed their course, marched east of north all day, passed Ticonderoga undiscovered, and stopped at night some five miles beyond it.  The weather was changing, and rain was coming on.  They scraped away the snow with their snow-shoes, piled in it a bank around them, made beds of spruce-boughs, built fires, and lay down to sleep, while the sentinels kept watch in the outer gloom.  In the morning there was a