In July, 1775, Washington went on to Cambridge and took charge of the Continental forces. These forces were, it is well known, about as unmanageable as those at work in volcanic mountains, sometimes making an ominous rumbling, sometimes erupting awkwardly for the peace of others near them, and occasionally discharging themselves most inconveniently for those whose duty it was to watch them. The hot patriotic principles, however, of these raw, unscored militia materials helped essentially the warm endeavors of Washington, Gates, Ward, and Lee to season them into tough disciplined, serviceable timber, and so to support loads and resist strains. In a few months even the most unpromising sticks were dry enough to be piled up around Boston, and thus to burn out General Howe. Following the old colonial habit of casting sheep’s-eyes upon Canada whenever the dogs of war were unkennelled, that shepherd dog, Ethan Allen, scented game at Crown Point, on the western side of Lake Champlain. Bounding away in long leaps, without a whine or a howl to indicate his purpose or direction, he suddenly sprang upon the British flocks quietly feeding there, and effectually penned and secured them. Hardly stopping to be petted for this exploit, the brave colly tore off, with only a small pack of eighty, to Montreal; but the British keepers there, apprised of his approach, managed, as he came up near the folds, to seize him, put a collar around his neck, and to send him to England, where, however, he never would hunt with the royal pack. General Montgomery was more fortunate; for within a month after, having taken St. John’s and Fort Chambly, he followed the footprints of Allen, and captured Montreal. Leaving about two hundred troops in that island city,—now the crowning jewel in the Anglo-American stomacher,—he pushed down the St. Lawrence, and at a point twenty miles above Quebec, absorbing the detachment of six hundred men led by the bold, dashing, unprincipled Arnold, he advanced upon the citadel of English America. Here in front of Quebec, after battling the cold for four weeks, the gallant Irishman, on the last day of 1775, amidst a storm of snow and of pelting iron hail, led on a vigorous assault against the place where, sixteen years before, in company with the brave Wolfe, he had gathered the bright laurels of victory, unmixed, as was not his commander’s,—with the gloomy cypress. Now the cypress was all that he was destined to grasp from the grim rock which resented a second capture by the same mortal.