PAGE 255 COLONIAL MOBILE

It may be that Gage's disapproval of more posts, as ex pressed in his letter of August 11 to Taylor, had something to do with this ; perhaps also sickness among the Mobile garrison, which led that summer to an encampment on Dauphine Island. Gage's opposition to distant posts was such that he not only wished to abandon the Mississippi forts, but even Mobile itself, and draw the force in West Florida to Pensacola. He evi dently had doubts about all the province. "The whole of the trade in those parts," he says, "consists of skins only; the furs come from above. You will know if the skin trade is of much value. Many people at home think not, and that it does not pay the expenses of Mobile and Pensacola."