]
In some respects the temper of the troops was excellent. In
the petty warfare of the past winter they had generally been
successful, proving themselves a match for the bushrangers
and Indians on their own ground; so that, as Sergeant Johnson
remarks, in his odd way, "Very often a small number of our
men would put to flight a considerable party of those Cannibals."
They began to think themselves invincible; yet they had
the deepest cause for anxiety. The effective strength of the garrison
was reduced to less than half, and of those that remained
fit for duty, hardly a man was entirely free from scurvy. The
rank and file had no fresh provisions; and, in spite of every
precaution, this malignant disease, aided by fever and dysentery,
made no less havoc among them than among the crews of Jacques Cartier
at this same place two centuries before. Of about seven thousand men
left at Quebec in the autumn, scarcely more than three thousand were
fit for duty on the twenty-fourth of April.[824] About seven hundred
had found temporary burial in the snowdrifts, as the frozen ground was
impenetrable as a rock.
[Footnote 824: _Return of the present State of His Majesty's Forces
in Garrison at Quebec, 24 April, 1760_ (Public Record Office).]
Meanwhile Vaudreuil was still at Montreal, where he says
that he "arrived just in time to take the most judicious measures
and prevent General Amherst from penetrating into thecolony.
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