military forces, but never had any chance to show his mettle, for
during the voyage the seamen were in control. The Admiral had
left England with secret instructions. He had not been informed
of the task before him and for it he was hardly prepared. There
were no competent pilots to correct his ignorance. Now that he
knew where he was going he was anxious about the dangers of the
northern waters. The St. Lawrence River, he believed, froze
solidly to the bottom in winter and he feared that the ice would
crush the sides of his ships. As he had provisions for only eight
or nine weeks, his men might starve. His mind was filled, as he
himself says, with melancholy and dismal horror at the prospect
of seamen and soldiers, worn to skeletons by hunger, drawing lots
to decide who should die first amidst the "adamantine frosts" and
"mountains of snow" of bleak and barren Canada.


The Gulf and River St. Lawrence spell death to an incompetent
sailor. The fogs, the numerous shoals and islands, make skillful
seamanship necessary. It is a long journey from Boston to Quebec
by water. For three weeks, however, all went well. On the 22d of
August, Walker was out of sight of land in the Gulf where it is
about seventy miles wide above the Island of Anticosti. A strong
east wind with thick fog is dreaded in those waters even now, and
on the evening of that day a storm of this kind blew up. In the
fog Walker lost his bearings. When in fact he was near the north
shore he thought he was not far from the south shore. At
half-past ten at night Paddon, the captain of the Edgar, Walker's
flagship, came to tell him that land was in sight. Walker assumed
that it was the south shore and gave a fatal order for the fleet
to turn and head northward, a change which turned them straight