1764.] REPULSE OF LOFTUS. 267 



to ascend the Mississippi, to take possession of 

 Fort Chartres and its dependent posts. His troops 

 were embarked in large and heavy boats. Their 

 progress was slow ; and they had reached a point 

 not more than eighty leagues above New Orleans, 

 when, one morning, their ears were greeted with 

 the crack of rifles from the thickets of the western 

 shore ; and a soldier in the foremost boat fell, with 

 a mortal wound. The troops, in dismay, sheered 

 over towards the eastern shore ; but, Avhen fairly 

 within gunshot, a score of rifles obscured the forest 

 edge with smoke, and filled the nearest boat with 

 dead and wounded men. On this, they steered for 

 the middle of the river, where they remained for 

 a time, exposed to a dropping fire from either bank, 

 too distant to take effect. 



The river was high, and the shores so flooded, 

 that nothing but an Indian could hope to find 

 foothold in the miry labyrinth. Loftus was terri- 

 fied ; the troops were discouraged, and a council 

 of officers determined that to advance was impos- 

 sible. Accordingly, with their best despatch, they 

 steered back for New Orleans, Avhere they arrived 

 without farther accident ; and where the French, 

 in great glee at their discomfiture, spared no ridi- 

 cule at their expense. They alleged, and with 

 much appearance of truth, that the English had 

 been repulsed by no more than thirty warriors. 

 Loftus charged D'Abbadie with having occasioned 

 his disaster by stirring up the Indians to attack 

 him. The governor called Heaven to witness his 

 innocence ; and, in truth, there is not the smallest 



