Out from the gateway of Crown Point, like centrifugal whirlwinds of fire, swept bands of savages, who swooped down on the settlements. Almost under the shadow of the palisades of Albany, Schenectady, and the villages along the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys, men were shot and their scalps taken to decorate Canadian wigwams. The little “God’s Acre” in every settlement on the Mohawk began to fatten with victims who had died out of their beds. Perhaps none of these ancient sleeping-places has been reverently emptied in order to consign their memorials of once active life to more enduring public honour in the modern cemeteries, but the number of perforated skulls surprises the beholder. In these mute witnesses to the disquiet of the past, he reads the story of ancestral danger and suffering. The devout frontiersman made his way to church on the Lord’s Day with his loaded gun on his shoulder, its flint well picked and its pan well primed. He took his seat at the end of the pew, only after sentinels had been posted and arms made ready for instant use. Slight wonder was it that the effects of all-night vigils, and the unusual posture of repose in a pew, rather than the length of the Domine’s sermon, induced sleep even in meeting. Most of the churches were loop-holed for defence, and even in the few old houses occasionally found with projecting second floor, we see an interesting survival of the old days, when from both church and dwelling a line of gun-barrels might at any hour decorate the eaves with gargoyles spouting fire and death. Away from the villages, the farmers, building a block-house on some commanding hill, and if possible over a well or spring, kept a sentinel on the roof while they laboured in the fields. Horn in hand, the watcher surveyed the wide stretches of valley, or scrutinized the edges of the clearing, to give warning of the approach of skulking red or white murderers. Yet human nerves would weary, and after constant strain for months with no near sign of danger, vigilance would often relax at the very moment when the enemy opened fire and raised his yell. Men would laugh to-day at warnings, while, perhaps, the boys in play would set up mock sentinels at the gateways, who on the morrow would be scalped or be bound and on their way to Canada. The twofold plan of campaign decided on in England was the old one first formulated by Leisler in 1690, looking to the invasion and subjugation of Canada, attempted again in 1711, when a German regiment in New York was raised for the purpose, and which was frustrated by the disaster to the British fleet. The land and naval forces of New and Old England were now to make rendezvous at Louisburg, and move up the St. Lawrence to Quebec, while the provincial militia of the middle and lower colonies, combined with the Iroquois if possible, should capture the French fort, St. Frederick, at Crown Point, and the city of Montreal.