The few big roomy buildings, which
served as storehouses and residences for the merchants, were built not
only for the storage of goods and peltries, but also as strongholds in
case of attack. The heads of the mercantile houses were generally
Englishmen; but the hardy men who traversed the woods for months and for
seasons, to procure furs from the Indians, were for the most part
French. The sailors, both English and French, who manned the vessels on
the lakes formed another class. The rough earthworks and stockades of
the fort were guarded by a few light guns. Within, the red-coated
regulars held sway, their bright uniforms varied here and there by the
dingy hunting-shirt, leggings, and fur cap of some Tory ranger or French
partisan leader. Indians lounged about the fort, the stores, and the
houses, begging, or gazing stolidly at the troops as they drilled, at
the creaking carts from the outlying farms as they plied through the
streets, at the driving to and fro from pasture of the horses and milch
cows, or at the arrival of a vessel from Niagara or a brigade of
fur-laden bateaux from the upper lakes.
The Indians.
In their paint and their cheap, dirty finery, these savages did not look
very important; yet it was because of them that the British kept up
their posts in these far-off forests, beside these great lonely waters;
it was for their sakes that they tried to stem the inrush of the
settlers of their own blood and tongue; for it was their presence alone
which served to keep the wilderness as a game preserve for the fur
merchants; it was their prowess in war which prevented French village
and British garrison from being lapped up like drops of water before the
fiery rush of the American advance.
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