For the silence of the wilderness, he heard
the clang and turmoil of human labor, the din of congregated
thousands; and where the great river rolls down through the
forest, in lonely grandeur, he saw the waters lashed into foam
beneath the prows of panting steamboats, flocking to the broad
levee."
Pontiac's war long kept the English from taking actual possession
of the western country. Meanwhile Saint-Ange, commanding the
remnant of the French garrison at Fort Chartres, resisted as best
he could the demands of the redskins for assistance against their
common enemy and hoped daily for the appearance of an English
force to relieve him his difficult position. In the spring of
1764 an English officer, Major Loftus, with a body of troops
lately employed in planting English authority in "East Florida"
and "West Florida," set out from New Orleans to take possession
of the up-river settlements. A few miles above the mouth of the
Red, however, the boats were fired on, without warning, from both
banks of the stream, and many of the men were killed or wounded.
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