“A party of our Rangers having been sent out on this side of the river (the south), on the 9th they took one man prisoner and two boys (his children) having followed him a little way, making a great noise, were in a most inhuman manner murdered by those worse than savage Rangers, for fear, as they pretend, they should be discovered by the noise of the children.  I wish this story was not fact, but I’m afraid there is little reason to doubt it:—­the wretches having boasted of it on their return, tho’ they now pretend to vindicate themselves by the necessity they were under; but, I believe, this barbarous action proceeded from that cowardice and barbarity which seems so natural to a native of America, whether of Indian or European extraction.  In other instances, those Rangers have hitherto been of some use, and showed in general a better spirit than usual.  They are for the most part raised in New England.”

On Friday, July 13th, the scene changed.  Wolfe was planning an attack on Montcalm’s camp and Fraser writes:  “I was sent orderly officer to the Camp, at Montmorency, where I had an opportunity of seeing our own, and the French posts nigh the Fall.  The river is fordable below the Fall at low water.”  On July 24th, 350 of the Highlanders under Col.  Simon Fraser were sent down the river to bring in prisoners and cattle.  The Highland leader met with misfortune.  On July 26th Fraser writes:  “Lieut.  Alexander Fraser, Junior, returned to camp from the detachment which marched with the Col. on the 24th.  He brings news of the Colonel’s having been wounded in the thigh, by an unlucky shot from a small party of Canadians who lay in ambush and fired on the detachment out of a bush, and then retired.  In the evening, the Col. came to camp with Capt.  McPherson, who was wounded by the same shot, and the ball lodged in his thigh; but it is thought neither of their wounds are (sic) dangerous.  There was not another man of the detachment touched.”  Next day the rest of the detachment “returned with three women and one man prisoners, and above two hundred head of cattle.”

On the following night July 28th, the French tried to destroy the British fleet by a fire ship.  “This night the French sent down a large fire raft which they did not set fire to till they were fired on by some of the boats who are every night on the watch for them above the shipping.  Our boats immediately grappled it, and tho’ it burnt with great violence, they towed it past all the shipping without any damage.”  We know from other sources that one of the sailors engaged in dragging away the fireship likened it to having “hell-fire in tow.”

Fraser records on Tuesday, July 31st, the disastrous attempt by the British to carry by a frontal attack Montcalm’s entrenchments along the Beauport shore.  The attack failed partly through the rashness of the Grenadiers who dashed forward prematurely.  For this Wolfe rebuked them but he commended the cool steadiness of the Highlanders.  Some 700 British casualties were the results of the attack.  When the British drew off they left many of their men fallen on the shore.  Fraser says:  “I observed some men coming down from the trenches where some of our people lay killed; we imagined they were Indians who were sent to scalp them, after the whole had retreated.”