Note 74 — Chapter II

"General Shirley's troops, after the attack on Niagara was relinquished in the autumn of the preceding year, had been employed in the erection of two new forts, one of them 450 yards from the old Fort Oswego, and bearing the same name, the other on the opposite side of the Onondaga River, to be called Fort Ontario. They were erected on the south side of Lake Ontario, at the mouth of the Onondaga, and constituted a port of great importance. The garrison, as we have already observed, consisted of 1400 men, chiefly militia and new-raised recruits, under the command of Colonel Mercer, an officer of experience and courage; but the situation of the forts was very ill chosen, the materials mostly timber or logs of wood, the defenses wretchedly continued and unfinished, and, in a word, the place altogether untenable against any regular approach."—Smollett's History of England, vol. iii., p. 535.