To return to my first project of encamping upon the heights of Abraham, our left was in the greatest security, not knowing that there was a ford in that river until some hours after your landing at the Sault.
WOLFE:--Is it then surprising that I should be ignorant of that ford, since you did not know it yourself? besides, it is only the inhabitants in the neighbourhood of rivers, swamps and lakes, who can give positive and sure information about them. And supposing I had found some of your Canadians at their houses there, they are so inviolably attached to their religion, king and country, that they would sooner have led me into a snare than instruct me in anything that could be prejudicial to their army.
Those whom a general sends to examine the _locale_ of a country must do it very superficially upon their own observations, without consulting or interrogating the peasants in the neighbourhood.
MONTCALM:--Whilst your soldiers were employed in making their camp, and pitching their tents, M. de Levis and his aide-de-camp Johnstone, were looking at you from the opposite side of the Sault. His aide-de-camp having asked him if he was positively certain that there was no ford in the Montmorency river, M. de Levis answering that there was not, and that he had been himself to examine it to its source, at a lake in the woods, about ten or twelve miles from the Sault. An inhabitant who overheard this conversation, told the aide-de-camp: "The General is mistaken; there is a ford which the inhabitants thereabouts pass every day in carrying their corn to a mill;" and he added that he had crossed it lately, with water not above his knees.
The aide-de-camp related to M. de Levis immediately his conversation with the Canadian, who would not believe there was a ford, and, examining him roughly, the Canadian was seized with awe, and respect for the General; his tongue faltered in his mouth, and he durst not boldly assert the truth. The aide-de-camp, in a whisper to the Canadian, ordered him to find out a person who had crossed the ford lately, and bring him immediately to M. de Levis' lodgings. The Canadian came to him in a moment, with a man who had crossed it the night before, with a sack of wheat upon his back, where he had found only eight inches deep of water.