Page:Lacrosse- The National Game of Canada (New Edition).djvu/79

 62 battle which sealed the fate of Canada, and though the colony was virtually conquered when Quebec was taken, the French still garrisoned the rest of the country. On the 8th of September, 1760, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, the last of the French governors, signed the capitulation of Canada; and the arrival at Montreal on the same day of the three armies of Sir Jeffrey Amherst, Col. Haviland, and Gen. Murray, consummated the surrender. The western outposts, however, still hoisted the fleur de lys, and a provincial officer, Major Robert Rogers, was commissioned by Amherst, on the 12th of September, to ascend the lakes with a body of hunters and back-woodsmen called "Rogers' Rangers," and take possession in the name of the King of England, of Detroit, Michillimackinac, and the other posts included in the capitulation. Rogers coveted the duty assigned him; it suited his mood exactly; and on the 13th he left with 200 men in fifteen whale boats, and was intercepted where now stands the city of Cleveland, Ohio, by Pontiac, the Indian lord of the country. Rogers told him of the capitulation and the object of his expedition, and Pontiac expressed his desire to live at peace with the English, though he