and full of chicares (?) by the rapids in the St. Lawrence, and
prolong their operations;--a very great advantage in a country where
there are violent frosts during seven months of the year. This island
is about twelve hundred fathoms long, and from a hundred to two
hundred broad. The entrenchments traced and conducted by M.
Bourlamarque are regular, and a proof of his superior knowledge in
fortifications. He barred the two branches of the river which formed
the island with staccados, or chains of big trees, linked to one
another at their ends by strong rings and circles of iron. This
prevented the English boats from Lake Champlain to pass the island in
the night, to reach Montreal. But for the staccados the island must
have been taken by them before they could proceed any further.

Some Iroquois, of the Five Nations, informed M. de Vaudreuil at
Montreal, that General Amherst was marching to invade Canada with a
very considerable army by the rapids and Lake Ontario, whilst General
Murray had orders to come up the river with his army from Quebec, and
join Gen. Amherst at Montreal. But they had no knowledge of a third
body of troops, about four thousand men, that came by Lake Champlain,
in the month of July, five weeks before the arrival of the other two
armies at Montreal, and besieged Isle aux Noix with a very
considerable train of artillery, cannon, mortars, &c., in profusion.

They erected five batteries of guns on the south side of the river,
with a bomb battery, which rendered our trenches useless, as they had
a sight of us everywhere, back, face and sideways, and so near us that
at the south staccado they killed several of our soldiers by their
musket shots.

The sandy ground protected us from the effect of their shells, which