[Footnote 36:  La Jonquiere au Ministre, 23 Fev. 1750.  Ibid., 6 Oct. 1751.  Compare Colonial Records of Pa., V. 508.]

His neophytes were gathered into the chapel for the first time in their lives, and there rewarded with a few presents.  He now prepared to turn homeward, his flock at the mission being left in his absence without a shepherd; and on the sixth of July he embarked, followed by a swarm of canoes.  On the twelfth they stopped at the Genesee, and went to visit the Falls, where the city of Rochester now stands.  On the way, the Indians found a populous resort of rattlesnakes, and attacked the gregarious reptiles with great animation, to the alarm of the missionary, who trembled for his bare-legged retainers.  His fears proved needless.  Forty-two dead snakes, as he avers, requited the efforts of the sportsmen, and not one of them was bitten.  When he returned to camp in the afternoon he found there a canoe loaded with kegs of brandy.  “The English,” he says, “had sent it to meet us, well knowing that this was the best way to cause disorder among my new recruits and make them desert me.  The Indian in charge of the canoe, who had the look of a great rascal, offered some to me first, and then to my Canadians and Indians.  I gave out that it was very probably poisoned, and immediately embarked again.”

He encamped on the fourteenth at Sodus Bay, and strongly advises the planting of a French fort there.  “Nevertheless,” he adds, “it would be still better to destroy Oswego, and on no account let the English build it again.”  On the sixteenth he came in sight of this dreaded post.  Several times on the way he had met fleets of canoes going thither or returning, in spite of the rival attractions of Toronto and Niagara.  No English establishment on the continent was of such ill omen to the French.  It not only robbed them of the fur-trade, by which they lived, but threatened them with military and political, no less than commercial, ruin.  They were in constant dread lest ships of war should be built here, strong enough to command Lake Ontario, thus separating Canada from Louisiana, and cutting New France asunder.  To meet this danger, they soon after built at Fort Frontenac a large three-masted vessel, mounted with heavy cannon; thus, as usual, forestalling their rivals by promptness of action.[37] The ground on which Oswego stood was claimed by the Province of New York, which alone had control of it; but through the purblind apathy of the Assembly, and their incessant quarrels with the Governor, it was commonly left to take care of itself.  For some time they would vote no money to pay the feeble little garrison; and Clinton, who saw the necessity of maintaining it, was forced to do so on his own personal credit.[38] “Why can’t your Governor and your great men [the Assembly] agree?” asked a Mohawk chief of the interpreter, Conrad Weiser.[39]

[Footnote 37:  Lieutenant Lindesay to Johnson, July, 1751.]