Through all the next night the gale continued, with
floods of driving rain. "I hope it will soon change," wrote Amherst on
the fifteenth, "for I have no time to lose." He was right. He had waited
till the season of autumnal storms, when nature was more dangerous than
man. On the sixteenth there was frost, and the wind did not abate. On
the next morning it shifted to the south, but soon turned back with
violence to the north, and the ruffled lake put on a look of winter,
"which determined me," says the General, "not to lose time by striving
to get to the Isle-aux-Noix, where I should arrive too late to force the
enemy from their post, but to return to Crown Point and complete the
works there." This he did, and spent the remnant of the season in the
congenial task of finishing the fort, of which the massive remains still
bear witness to his industry.
[Footnote 749: _Orderly Book of Commissary Wilson_.]
When Levis heard that the English army had fallen back, he wrote, well
pleased, to Bourlamaque: "I don't know how General Amherst will excuse
himself to his Court, but I am very glad he let us alone, because the
Canadians are so backward that you could count on nobody but the
regulars."[750]
[Footnote 750: _Levis a Bourlamaque, 1 Nov. 1759._]
Concerning this year's operations on the Lakes, it may be observed that
the result was not what the French feared, or what the British colonists
had cause to hope.
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