Meanwhile the effects of the expedition had already justified it.  At first the Indians of the Ohio had shown a bold front.  One of them, a chief whom the English called the Half-King, came to Fort Le Boeuf and ordered the French to leave the country; but was received by Marin with such contemptuous haughtiness that he went home shedding tears of rage and mortification.  The Western tribes were daunted.  The Miamis, but yesterday fast friends of the English, made humble submission to the French, and offered them two English scalps to signalize their repentance; while the Sacs, Pottawattamies, and Ojibwas were loud in professions of devotion.[131] Even the Iroquois, Delawares, and Shawanoes on the Alleghany had come to the French camp and offered their help in carrying the baggage.  It needed but perseverance and success in the enterprise to win over every tribe from the mountains to the Mississippi.  To accomplish this and to curb the English, Duquesne had planned a third fort, at the junction of French Creek with the Alleghany, or at some point lower down; then, leaving the three posts well garrisoned, Pean was to descend the Ohio with the whole remaining force, impose terror on the wavering tribes, and complete their conversion.  Both plans were thwarted; the fort was not built, nor did Pean descend the Ohio.  Fevers, lung diseases, and scurvy made such deadly havoc among troops and Canadians, that the dying Marin saw with bitterness that his work must be left half done.  Three hundred of the best men were kept to garrison Forts Presquisle and Le Boeuf; and then, as winter approached, the rest were sent back to Montreal.  When they arrived, the Governor was shocked at their altered looks.  “I reviewed them, and could not help being touched by the pitiable state to which fatigues and exposures had reduced them.  Past all doubt, if these emaciated figures had gone down the Ohio as intended, the river would have been strewn with corpses, and the evil-disposed savages would not have failed to attack the survivors, seeing that they were but spectres."[132]

[Footnote 131:  Rapports de Conseils avec les Sauvages a Montreal, Juillet, 1753.  Duquesne au Ministre, 31 Oct. 1753.  Letter of Dr. Shuckburgh in N.Y.  Col.  Docs., VI. 806.]

[Footnote 132:  Duquesne au Ministre, 29 Nov. 1753.  On this expedition, compare the letter of Duquesne in N.Y.  Col.  Docs., X. 255, and the deposition of Stephen Coffen, Ibid., VI. 835.]

Legardeur de Saint-Pierre arrived at the end of autumn, and made his quarters at Fort Le Boeuf.  The surrounding forests had dropped their leaves, and in gray and patient desolation bided the coming winter.  Chill rains drizzled over the gloomy “clearing,” and drenched the palisades and log-built barracks, raw from the axe.  Buried in the wilderness, the military exiles resigned themselves as they might to months of monotonous solitude; when, just after sunset on the eleventh of December, a tall youth came out