The Congress had turned an anxious eye towards Canada at the opening of the contest; being fully aware of the danger of their gaining possession of our harbors and lakes, and the great difficulty to us, to obtain possession of their strong forts on their settled frontier. The British commenced the naval preparations on their side with great alacrity and success. But the Americans had every obstacle, but the want of zeal, to encounter in preparing for defence. General Gates was directed to co-operate with General Schuyler, but there was a miserable and irreparable deficiency in cannon, in the materials of ship-building, and even in the necessary workmen. The country had been hitherto a desert. Colonization, in its natural progress, had not approached these solitary shores. Nothing but the exigencies of the former war with France had occasioned this region to be traversed or inhabited. A few forts, with suitable garrisons, were all that could be found in it, and that abundance of workmen, vessels and prepared timber, which a well-planted country would have spontaneously furnished, was unknown. Schuyler, indeed, was not destitute of a naval armament, but it was insufficient to cope with the greater preparations of the enemy. With all the exertions of the two commanders, they were merely able to equip about fifteen vessels, half of which were little better than boats, and the largest carried only twelve small guns very ill supplied with ammunition. This small armament, at the recommendation of General Gates, was placed under the command of the intrepid, and then, unsuspected Arnold. The first operations of the campaign consisted in a contest between these vessels under Arnold, and a much superior force under General Carleton, in which the land forces had no concern. The British army under Carleton commenced their advance to Ticonderoga, where Gates and Schuyler were already stationed with eight thousand men, well provisioned and determined to defend it to the last extremity; all parties expecting to witness a long, obstinate, and, perhaps, a bloody siege. Some causes, however, and most probably the lateness of the season, induced Carleton to disappoint these expectations, by precipitately retiring to Canada in search of winter quarters. This retreat enabled General Gates to march southward, with a considerable detachment of his army, to assist General Washington in his operations in the middle colonies. The ensuing year was passed in a great variety of movements and skirmishes in the lower districts of New York, Pennsylvania and Jersey, between detachments of each army. In the ordinary records of the time, we meet with no splendid or conspicuous part performed by the subject of these memoirs, though there is sufficient reason to believe that his services in that motley warfare were active, strenuous and useful.