Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/257

 his fatal error at the last, he apologized to Washington for his petulant reply to his urgent advice. Dunbar and the troops hurried onward to Fort Cumberland, and despite all remonstrances, rested not till they had reached Philadelphia. Truly, it was "the most extraordinary victory ever obtained, and the farthest flight even made." And the effect upon the colonists was not without importance: "the whole transaction," as Franklin significantly observes, "gave us the first suspicion, that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regular troops had not been well founded."

 

1755—1763.

Admiral Boscawen was cruising off the coast of Newfoundland, watching for the French fleet, which, as we have before stated, escaped falling into his hands, a force of ten thousand men embarked at Boston for the Bay of Fundy. The French settlements here, it was asserted, were encroachments on tie province of Nova Scotia. Colonel Monckton took the command of the troops, and in the early part of June, 1755, succeeded, without much difficulty, in taking the forts at Beau Sejour and Gaspereau. The fort at the mouth of the St. John's River, on the approach of the English, was abandoned and burned. It had proved not difficult to drive out the French troops from the Bay of Fundy; but it became a 