My dear sir [to Captain Ryal], you always bring us good news.

I must go and tell the King that Cape Breton is an island."] Although Shirley applied to the King for help with which to defend Nova Scotia, he knew full well that the burden of defense would fall on the colonies.

And with that determination and persistence which always brings success he labored hard to persuade New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island to join with Massachusetts in an effort to capture Louisburg.

It would be delightful to tell how he overcame all difficulties; how the young men rallied on the call for troops; how at the end of March, 1745, 4000 of them in a hundred transports and accompanied by fourteen armed ships set sail, followed by the prayers of all New England, and after a siege of six weeks took the fortress on the 17th of June, 1745.

But the story is too long.[1] It is enough to know that the victory was hailed with delight on both sides of the Atlantic, but that when peace came, in 1748, the British government was still so blind to the struggle for North America which had been going on for fifty years, that Louisburg was restored to the French.
[Footnote 1: Read Samuel Adams Drake's _Taking of Louisburg_; Parkman's _A Half-century of Conflict_, Vol.II., pp.