round Cabot Strait before the month of May. Saunders,
greatly annoyed by this delay, sent him off with eight
men-of-war on the 5th of May. Wolfe gave him seven hundred
soldiers under Carleton. These forces were sufficient to
turn back, capture, or destroy the twenty-three French
merchantmen which were then bound for Quebec with supplies
and soldiers as reinforcements for Montcalm. But the
French ships were a week ahead of Durell; and, when he
landed Carleton at Isle-aux-Coudres on the 28th of May,
the last of the enemy's transports had already discharged
her cargo at Quebec, sixty miles above.

Isle-aux-Coudres, so named by Jacques Cartier in 1535,
was a point of great strategic importance; for it commanded
the only channel then used. It was the place Wolfe had
chosen for his winter quarters, that is, in case of
failure before Quebec and supposing he was not recalled.
None but a particularly good officer would have been
appointed as its first commandant. Carleton spent many
busy days here preparing an advanced base for the coming
siege, while the subsequently famous Captain Cook was
equally busy 'a-sounding of the channell of the Traverse'
which the fleet would have to pass on its way to Quebec.
Some of Durell's ships destroyed the French 'long-shore
batteries near this Traverse, at the lower end of the
island of Orleans, while the rest kept ceaseless watch
to seaward, anxiously scanning the offing, day after day,
to make out the colours of the first fleet up. No one
knew what the French West India fleet would do; and there
was a very disconcerting chance that it might run north