1690.] CASCO BAY. 229 



Portneuf and his lieutenant, Courtemanche. They 

 advanced at their leisure, often stopping to hunt, 

 till in May they were joined on the Kennebec by 

 a large body of Indian warriors. On the twenty- 

 fifth, Portneuf encamped in the forest near the 

 English forts, with a force which, including Hertel's 

 party, the Indians of the Kennebec, and another 

 band led by Saint-Castin from the Penobscot, 

 amounted to between four and five hundred men. 1 

 Fort Loyal was a palisade work with eight can- 

 non, standing on rising ground by the shore of the 

 bay, at what is now the foot of India Street in the 

 city of Portland. Not far distant were four block- 

 houses and a village which they were designed to 

 protect. These with the fort were occupied by about 

 a hundred men, chiefly settlers of the neighborhood, 

 under Captain Sylvanus Davis, a prominent trader. 

 Around lay rough and broken fields stretching to 

 the skirts of the forest half a mile distant. Some 

 of Portneuf's scouts met a straggling Scotchman, 

 and could not resist the temptation of killing 

 him. Their scalp-yells alarmed the garrison, and 

 thus the advantage of surprise was lost. Davis 

 resolved to keep his men within their defences, 

 and to stand on his guard; but there was little 

 or no discipline in the yeoman garrison, and 

 thirty young volunteers under Lieutenant Thad- 

 deus Clark sallied out to find the enemy. They 

 were too successful ; for, as they approached the 

 top of a hill near the woods, they observed a num- 

 ber of cattle staring with a scared look at some 



1 Declaration of Sylvanus Davis ; Mather, Magnolia, II. 603. 



