FURTHER PROCEEDINGS IN AMERICA.

The earl of Loudon finding the season too far advanced to admit of any enterprise against the enemy, exerted all his endeavours in making preparations for an early campaign in the spring, securing the frontiers of the English colonies, in forming an uniform plan of action, and promoting a spirit of harmony among the different governments, which had been long divided by jarring interests, and other sources of dissension. Meanwhile, the forts Edward and William-Henry were put in a proper posture of defence, and secured with numerous garrisons; and the forces put into winter quarters at Albany where comfortable barracks were built for that purpose. Fort Granville, on the confines of Pennsylvania, an inconsiderable block-house, was surprised by a party of French and Indians, who made the garrison prisoners, consisting of two-and-twenty soldiers, with a few women and children. These they loaded with flour and provisions, and drove them into captivity; but the fort they reduced to ashes. Many shocking murders were perpetrated upon defenceless people, without distinction of age or sex, in different parts of the frontiers; but these outrages were in some measure balanced by the advantages resulting from a treaty of peace, which the governor of Pennsylvania concluded with the Delaware Indians, a powerful tribe that dwell upon the river Sasquehanna, forming, as it were, a line along the southern skirts of the province. At the same time the governor of Virginia secured the friendship and alliance of the Cherokees and Catawbas, two powerful nations adjoining to that colony, who were able to bring three thousand fighting men into the field. All these circumstances considered, Great Britain had reason to expect that the ensuing campaign would be vigorously prosecuted in America, especially as a fresh reinforcement of troops, with a great supply of warlike stores, were sent to that country in fourteen transports, under convoy of two ships of war, which sailed from Cork in Ireland about the beginning of November.