170 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST. [1760. 



Kogers himself, with a small party, proceeded 

 northward to relieve the French garrison of 

 Michillimackinac. The storms and gathering ice 

 of Lake Huron forced him back without accom- 

 plishing his object ; and Michillimackinac, with the 

 three remoter posts of St. Marie, Green Bay, and 

 St. Joseph, remained for a time in the hands of the 

 French. During the next season, however, a 

 detachment of the 60th regiment, then called the 

 Royal xlmericans, took possession of them ; and 

 nothing now remained within the power of the 

 French, except the few posts and settlements on 

 the Mississippi and the Wabash, not included in 

 the capitulation of Montreal. 



The work of conquest was finished. The fertile 

 wilderness beyond the Alleghanies, over which 

 France had claimed sovereignty, — that boundless 

 forest, with its tracery of interlacing streams, which, 

 like veins and arteries, gave it life and nourishment, 

 — had passed into the hands of her rival. It was 

 by a few insignificant forts, separated by oceans of 

 fresh water and uncounted leagues of forest, that 

 the two great European powers, France first, and 

 now England, endeavored to enforce their claims 

 to this vast domain. There is something ludicrous 

 in the disparity between the importance of the 

 possession and the slenderness of the force em- 

 ployed to maintain it. A region embracing so 

 many thousand miles of surface was consigned 

 to the keeping of some fire or six hundred men. 

 Yet the force, small as it was, appeared adequate 

 to its object, for there seemed no enemy to contend 



