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ON THE DEFENCELESS STATE OF GREAT BRITAIN* Post 8vo. 12s. PARIS IN 1851— A FAGGOT OF FRENCH STICKS. 2 vols. Post Svo. 24s. STOKERS AND POKERS; or, the No* th-Westebn Railway. Post Svo. 2«. Gd. THE EMIGRANT. Fcap. Svo. 2s. Sd. BUBBLES FROM THE BRUNNEN OF NASSAU. 16mo 5s. ROUGH NOTES taken during some Rapid Journeys across the Pampas. Post Svo. 2s. 6d, PREFACE. As the Common Crow is made up of a small lump of carrion and two or three handfuls of leathers, so was this Volume originally composed of Political History, buoyed up by a few light sketches, solely written to make a dull subject fly. As these sketches — I believe faithfully — delineate the interior of one of the noblest possessioris of the British Crown, they are offered to the public in their present form, divested of those observations of a personal nature to which it would now be useless to refer. • ' . I""' I I "IP * j^ CONTENTS, OUAPTKB TAGS I. A New Sky 1 II. The Back-Woods ------- 25 III. Sergeant Neill - - - - - - - 40 IV. The Grenadiers' Pond - - - - - - 47 V. The Emigrant's Lark - - - - - - 63 VI. The Long Trot ------- 60 VII. The Bark Canoe - - - -, - - - 92 VIII. The Flare-up 117 IX. The British Flag - - - - - - - 142 X. The Falls of Niagara - - - - - - 156 XI. The Apology - - - - ., - - - 182 XII. The Hunted Hare - 197 XIII. Home --218 f / \i THE EMIGRANT. CHAPTER L A NEW SKY. However deeply prejudiced an Englishman may be in favour of Lis own country, yet I think it is impossible for him to cross the Atlantic without admittin^j that in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the new world Nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colours than she had used in delineating and in beautifying the old world. The heavens of America appear infinitely higher - — the sky is bluer — the clouds are whiter — the air is fresher — the cold is intenser — the moon looks larger — the stars are brighter — the thunder is louder — the lightning is yivider — the wind is stronger — the rain is heavier — the mountains are higher — the rivers larger — tLe forests bigger — the plains broader ; in short, the gigantic and beautiful features of the new world seem to correspond very wonderfully with 'the increased locomotive powers and other brilliant discoveries which, under the blessing of an B ' 1\ I • THE EMIGRANT. Chap. I. Almighty power, have lately been developed to mankind. The difference of climate in winter between the old and new world amounts, it has been estimated, to about thirteen degrees of latitude. Accordingly, the region of North America, which basks under the same sun or latitude as Florence, is visited in winter with a cold equal to that of St. Petersburgh or of Moscow; 9' I thus, while the inhabitant of the. Mediterranean is wearing cotton or other light clothing, the inhabitant of the very same latitude in the new world is to be found either huddled close to a stove hot enough to bum his eyes out, or muffled up in furs, with all sorts of contrivances to preserve the very nose on his face, and the ears on his head, from being frozen. This extra allowance of cold is the effect of various causes, one of which I will endeavour shortly to describe. It is well known that, so far as temperature is concerned, cold is increased by altitude as it is by latitude ; accordingly, that by ascending a steep mountain — the Himalayas, for instance — one may obtain, with scarcely any alteration of latitude, and in a few hours, the same change of temperature which v/ould require a long journey over the surface of the earth to reach ; and thus it appears that in the hottest regions of the globe there exist impending stratifications of cold proportionate in intensity to their respective altitudes. ^ . Now, as soon as moisture or vapour enters these Chap. I. A NEW SKY. 3 latitudes, in southern countries it is condensed into rain, and in the winter of northern ones it is frozen into snow, which, from its specific gravity, continues its feathery descent until it is deposited upon the surface of the ground, an emblem of the cold regicxi from which it has proceeded. But from the mere showing of the case, it is evident that this snow is as much a stranger in the land on which it is reposing, as a Laplander is who lands at Lisbon, or as in England a pauper is who enters a parish in which he is not entitled to settle- ment; and, therefore, just as the parish officers, under the authority of the law, vigorously proceed to eject the pauper, so does Nature proceed to eject the cold that has taken temporary possession of land to which it does not owe its birth ; and the process of ejectment is es follows. The superincumbent atmosphere, warmed by the sun, melts the surface of the snow ; and as soon as the air has taken to itself a portion of the cold, the wind, bringing with it a new atmosphere, repeats the operation ; and thus on, until the mass of snow is either effectually ejected, or materially dimi- nished. But while the combined action of sun and wind are producing this simple effect in the old world, there exists in the noi hem regions of the new world a physical obstruction to the operation, I allude to the interminable forest, through the bou^u? and branches of which the descending snow fi o, until reaching the ground it remains hidden from B 2 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. I. the sun «,nd protected from the wind; 'and thus every day's snow adds to the accumulation, until the whole region is converted into an almost bound- less icehouse, from which there slowly but con- tinuously ariijes, like a mist from the ground, a stratum of cold air, which the north-west prevailing wind wafts over the south, and which freezes every- thing in its way. The effect of air passing over ice is curiously ex- emplified on the Atlantic, where, at certain periods of the year, all of a sudden, and ofiten during the night, there suddenly comes over every passenger a cold mysterious chill, like the hand of death itself, caused by the vicinity of a floating iceberg. In South America I remember a trifling instance of the same effect. I was walking in the main street of San Jago in the middle of the summer, and, like every human or living being in the city, was ex- hausted by extreme heat, when I suddenly felt as if some one was breathing upon my face with frozen lungs. I stopped, and, turning round, perceived at a little distance a line of mules laden with snow they had just brought down from the Andes. And if this insignificant cargo — if the presence of a solitary little iceberg in the ocean can produce the sensation I have described, it surely need hardly be observed how great must be the freezing effects on the conti- nent of North America, of the north-west wind blow- ing over an uncovered icehouse, composed of masses of accumulated snow several feet in thickness, and many hundreds of miles both in length and breadth. Chap. I. A NEW SKY. Now, jt is curious to reflect that, while every • backwoodsman in America is occupying himself, as he thinks, solely for his own interest, in clearing his location, every tree — which, failing under his axe, admits a patch of sunshine to the earth — in an in- finitesimal degree softens and ameliorates the climate of the vast continent around him ; and yet, as the ' portion of cleared land in North America, compared with that which remains uncleared, has been said scarcely to exceed th^t which the seams of a coat bear to the whole gf rment, it is evident that, although the assiduity of tht Anglo-Saxon race has no doubt affected the climato of North America, the axe is too weak an instrument to produce any important change. But one of the most wonderful characteristics of Nature is the manner in which she often, unob- servedly, produces great effects from causes so minute as to be almost invisible, and accordingly while the human race — so far as an alteration of climate is concerned — are labouring almost in vain, in the regions in question, swarms of little flies, strange as it may sound, are, and for many years have been, most materially altering the climate of the great continent of North America ! The manner in which they unconsciously perform this important duty is as follows : — •They sting, bite, and torment the wild animals to such a degree, that, especially in summer, the ))oor creatures, like those in Abyssinia, described by Bruce, become almost in a state of distraction, and TT* THE EMIGRANT. Chaj). I* I ii to get rid of their assailants, wherever the forest happened to be on fire, they rushed to the smoke, • instinctively knowing quite well that the flies would be unable to follow therii there. The wily Indij^a, observing these movements, shrewdly perceived that by setting fire to the forest the flies would drive to him his game, instead of his being obliged to trail in search of it ; and the ex- periment having proved eminently successful, the Indians for many years have been, and still are, in the habit of burning tracts of wood so immense, that from very high and scientific authority I have been informed that the amount of land thus burned under the influence of the flies has exceeded many millions of acres, and that it has been, and still is, materially changing the climate of North America ! But besides the effect it is producing on the ther- mometer, it is simultaneously working out another great operation of Nature, Although the game, to avoid the stings of their tiny assailants, come from distant regions to the smoke, and therein fall from the arrows and rifles of their human foes, yet this burning of the forest destroys the rabbits and small game, as well as the young of the larger game, and, therefore, just as brandy and whisky for a short time raise the spirits of the drunkard, but eventually leave him pale, melancholy, and dejected, so does this vicious, im- provident mode of poaching game for a short time fatten, but eventually afllict with famir<^, all those who have engaged in it ; and thus, for instance, the Cha]). I. forest jmoke, • would ments, 5 forest . of his he ex- al, the are, in le, that e been . under aillions terially e ther- nother f their to the iles of forest as the ust as spirits pale, s, im- t time those e, the Chap. 1. A NEW SKY. Beaver Indians, who forty years £*go were a powerful and numerous tribe, are now reduced to less than one hundred men, who can scarcely find wild animals enough to keep themselves alive, — in short, the red population is diminishing in the same ratio as the destruction of the moose and wood buffalo, or -vhich their forefathers had subsisted: and as every tra- veller, as well as trader, in those various regions confirms these statements, how wonderful is the dispensation of the Almighty, under which, by the simple agency of little flies, not only is the American Continent gradually undergoing a process which, with other causes, will assimilate its climate to that of Europe, but that the Indiana themselves are clear- ing and preparing their own country for the re- ception of another race, who will hereafter gaze at the remains of the elk, the bear, and the beaver, with the same feelings of astonishment with which similar vestiges are discovered in Europe — the monuments of a state of existence that has passed away I * In the mean while, however, the climate of North America forms the most remarkable feature in its physical charac^r. In Europe, Asia, and Africa, just as the old pro- verb says, " Tell me his company, and I '11 tell you the man ;" so, if the latitude be given, the climate may with considerable accuracy be described; in fact, the distinction between hot climates and cold ones is little else but the difference between the dis- tances of each from the equator or from the pole. 8 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. I. But in the continent of North America the cli- mate, compari lively speaking, regardless of latitude, is both hot and cold; and thus, for instance, in Canada, while the summer is as roasting as the Me- diterranean, and occasionally as broiling as the West Indies the winter is that of the capitals of Norway and Sweden; indeed, the cold of the Carada winter must h'^ felt to be imagined, and when feh can no more be described by words than colours to a blind man or music to a deaf one. Even under bright sunshine, and in a most exhi- larating air, the biting effect of the cold upon the portion of the face that is exposed to it resembles the application of a strong acid ; and the healthy grin which the countenance assumes, requires- -as I often observed on those who for many mii. ites had been in a warm room waiting to see me — a cl ider- able time to relax. In a calm almost any degree of cold is bearable, but the application of successive dosfes of it to the face, by wind, befcomes occasionally almost intoler- able ; indeed I. remember seeing the left cheeks of nearly twenty of our soldiers simultaneously frost- bitten in marchi ig about a hundrai yards, across a bleak open space, completely exposed to a strong and bitterly cold north-west wind that was blowing upon us all. The remedy for this intense cold, to which many Canadians and others have occasionally recourse, is — at least to my feelings it always appeared — in- finitely worse than the disease. On entering, for Chap. I. A NEW SKY, instance, the small parlour of a little inn, a number of strong able-bodied fellows are discovered holding their hands a few inches before their faces, and sitting in silence immediately in front of a stove of such excruciating power, that it really feels as if it would roast the very eyes in their sockets, and yet, as one endures this agony, the back part is as cold as if it belonged to what is called at home " Old Father Christmas !*' Of late years English fireplaces have been in- troduced into many houses; and though mine at Toronto was warmed with hot air from a large oven, with fires in all our sitting-rooms, nevertheless the wood for my grate, piled close to the fire, often re- mained till night covered with the snow which was on it when first deposited there in the morning; and as a further instance of the climate, I may add that several times, while my mind was very warmly occupied in writing my despatches, I found my pen full of a lump of stuff that appeared to be honey, but which proved to be frozen ink; again, after washing in the morning, when I took up some money that had lain all night on my table, I at first fancied it had become sticky until I discovered that the sensation was caused by its freezing to my fingers, which in consequence of my ablutions were not perfectly dry. Notwithstanding however this intensity of cold, the powerful circulation of the blood of large qua- drupeds, like the movement of the Wi.-sirs in the great lakes, keeps the red fluid from freezing ; but 10 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. I. the human frame not being gifted with this power, many people lose their limbs, and occasionally their lives, from cold. I one day inquired of a fine ruddy honest-looking man who called upon me, and whose toes and instep of each foot had been truncated, how the accident happened ? He told me that the first winter he came from England he lost his way in the forest ; that after walking for some hours, feeling pain in his feet, he took ofi his boots, and, from the flesh imme- diately swelling, he was unable to put them on again. His stockings, which were very old ones, soon wore into holes, and as rising on his insteps he was hurriedly proceeding he knew not where, he saw with alarm, but without feeling the slightest pain, first one toe and then another break ofi" as if they had been pieces of brittle stick, and in this mutilated state he continued to advance till he reached a path which led him to an inhabited log-house, where he remained suffering great pain till his cure was effected. On another occasion, while an Englishman was driving one bright beautiful day in a sleigh on the ice, his horse suddenly ran away, and, fancying he could stop him better without his cumbersome fur gloves than with them, he unfortunately took them off. As the infuriated animal at his utmost speed proceeded, the man, who was facing a keen north- west wind, felt himself gradually as it were tummg into marble, and by the time he stopped both his hands were so completely and so irrecoverably frozen, that he was obliged to have them amputated. Chap. I. A NEW SKY. 11 Although the sun, from the latitude, has consider- able power, it appears only to illuminate the spark- ling snow, which, like the sugar on a bridal cake, j conceals the whole surface. The instant however I the fire of heaven sinks be1:»w th^ horizon, the cold descends from the upper regions ot the atmos- phere with a feeling as if it were poured down upon [the head and shoulders from a jug. From the above sketch it must be evident that [the four seasons of the year in Canada exhibit pic- [tures strikingly contracted with each other. In the summer, the excessive heat — the violent [paroxysms of thunder — the parching drought — the occasional deluges of rain — the sight of bright red, [bright blue, and other gaudy-plmnaged birds — of the [brilliant humming-bird, and of innumerable fire-flies that at night appear like the reflection upon earth of the stars shining above them in the lieavens, would ilmost persuade the emigrant that he was living [within the tropics. As autumn approaches, the various trees of the iPt assume hues of every shade of red, yellow, and )rown, of the most vivid description. The air gra- lually becomes a healthy and delightful mixture of ^unshine and frost, and the golden simsets are so lany glorious assemblages of clouds — some like lountains of white wool, others of the darkest hues — id of broad rays of yellow, of crimson, and of golden fight, which without intermixing radiate upwards to gr?^t height from the point of the horizon at which the (i^p-red luminary is about to disappear. lore." 12 THE EMIGRAin'. Chap. I. As the winter approaches the cold daily strengthens, and before the branches of the trees and the surface of the country become white, every living being seems to be sensible of the temperature that is about to arrive. The gaudy birds, humming-birds, and fire-flies, depart first; then follow the pigeons; the wild- fowl fly away to the lakes, until scarcely a bird re- mains to be seen in the forest. Several of the animals seek refuge in warmer regions; and even the shaggy bear, whose coat seems warm enough to resist any degree of cold, instinctively looks out in time for a hollow tree into which he may leisurely climb, to hang in it during the winter as inanimate as a flitch of bacon from the ceiling of an English farm-house ; and even many of the fishes make their deep-water arrangements for not coming to the sur- face of the rivers and harbours during the period they are covered with ice. Notwithstanding the cheerful brightness of the winter's sun, I always feL; that there was some- thing indescribably awful and appalling in all these bestial, birdal, and piscal precautions ; and yet it is with pride that one observes that, while the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, one after another, are seen retreating before the approaching winter like women and children before an advancing army, the Anglo-Saxon race stand firm ! and indeed they are quite right to do so, inasmuch as the winter, when it does arrive, turns out to be a season of hilarity and of healthy enjoyment. Not only is the whole surface of the ground, in- Chap. I. H rhap. I. A NEW SKY. 13 I eluding roads and paths of every description, beau- tifully macadamised with a covering of snow, over which every man's horse, with tinkling bells, can draw him and his family in a sleigh; but every jharbour becomes a national play-ground to ride on, and every river an arterial road to travel on. In all directions running water gradually congeals. I The mill-wheel becomes covered with a frozen tor- Irent, in which it remains as in a glass-case; and I have even seen small waterfalls begin to freeze on I both sides, until the cataract, arrested in its fall by the power of heaven, is converted for the season into a solid mirror. Although the temperature of the water in the great lakes is infinitely below freezing, yet the restless rise and fall of the waves prevents their congelation. As I a trifling instance, however, of their disposition to do so, I may mention that during the two winters I was at Toronto, I made a rule, from which I never de- parted, to walk every morning to the end of a long wooden pier that ran out into the unfrozen waters of j the lake. In windy weather, and during extreme cold, the water, in dashing against this work, rose in the air; but before it could reach me it often froze, and thus, without wetting my cloak, the drops of I ice used to fall harmless at my feet. But although the great lake, for want of a mo- ment's tranquillity, cannot congeal, yet for hundreds of miles along its shores the waves, as they break on i the ground, instantly freeze, and this operation con- tinuing by night as well as by day, the quiet shingled 14 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. I. beach is converted throughout its whole length into high, sharp, jagged rocks of ice, over which it is occasionally difficult to climb. I was one day riding with a snaffle-bridle on the glare ice of the great bay of Toronto, on a horse I had just purchased, without having been made aware of his vice, which I afterwards learned had been the cause of a serious accident to his late master, when he suddenly, unasked, explained it to me by running away. On one side of me was the open water of the lake, into which if I had ridden, I should almost instantly have been covered with a coating of ice as white as that on a candle that has just received its first dip ; while on every other side I was surrounded by these jagged rocks of ice, the narrow passes through which I was going much too fast to be able to investigate. My only course, therefore, was to force my horse round and round within the circumference of the little troubles that environed me ; and this I managed to do, every time diminishing the circle, until, before I was what Sidney Smith termed " squirrel-minded," the animal became sufficiently tired to stop. The scene on these frozen harbours and bays in winter is very interesting. Sleighs, in which at least one young representative of the softer sex is gene- rally seated, are to be seerx and heard driving and tinkling across in various directions, or occasionally standing still to witness a trotting-match or some other amusement on the ice. In the midst of this scene, here and there are a Chap. I. H Chap. I. A NEW SKY. 15 or some lere are a few dark spots on the surface, which it is difficult to analyze even when approached, until from beneath the confused mass there gradually arises, with a mild " Why-disturb-mc ?" expression of countenance, the red face and black shaggy head of an Indian, who for hours has been lying on his stomach to spear fish through a small hole which, lor that purpose, he has cut through the ice. In other parts are to be seen group.^ of men occu- pied in sawing out for sale large cubical blocks of ice of a beautiful bluish appearance, piled upon each other like dressed Bath-stones for building. The water of which this ice is composed is as clear as crystal, resembling that which, under the ap- pellation of Wenham ice, has lately been imported to England as well as to India, and which has become a new luxury of general use. I have often been amused at observing how im- perfectly the theory of ice is, practically speaking, understood in England. People talk of its being " as hot as fire," and ** as cold as ice," just as if the temperature of each were a fixed quantity, whereas there are as many temperatures of fire, and as many temperatures of ice, as there are climates on the face of the globe. The heat of " boiling water" is a fixed quantity, and any attempt to make water hotter than " boil- ing" only creates steam, which flies off from the top exactly as fast as, and exactly in the proportion to, the amount of heat, be it great or small, that is ap- plied at the bottom. 16 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. I. Now, for want of half a moment's reflection, people in England are very prone to believe that water can- not be made colder than icc^ ; and, accordingly, if a good-humoured man succeeds in filling his ice- house, he feels satisfied that his ice is as good as any other man's ice ; in short, that ice is ice, and that there is no use in anybody attempting to deny it. But the truth is, that the temperature of thirty-two degrees of Fahrenheit, that at which water freezes, is only the commencement of an operation that is almost infinite ; for after its congelation water is as competent to continue to receive cold as it was when it was fluid. The application of cold to a block of ice does not therefore, as in the case of heat applied beneath boiling water, cause what is added at one end to fly out at the other, but, on the contrary, the extra cold is added to and retained by the mass, and thus the temperature of the ice falls with the tem- perature of the air, until in Lower Canada it occa- sionally sinks to forty degrees below zero, or to seventy-two degrees below the temperature of ice just congealed. It is evident, therefore, that if two icehouses were to be Allied, the one with the former, say Canada ice, and the other with the latter, say English ice, the difference between the quantity of cold stored up in each would be as appreciable as the difference be- tween a cellar full of gold and a cellar full of copper ; in short, the intrinsic value of ice, like that of metals, depends on the investigation of an assayer — that is to say, a cubic foot of Lower Canada ice is in- Chap. I. A NEW SKY. 17 finitely more valuable, or, in other words, it contains infinitely more cold, than a cubic foot of Upper Canada ice, which again contains more cold than a cubic foot of Wenham ice, which contains infinitely more cold than a cubic foot of English ice ; and thus, although each of these four cubic feet of ice has pre- cisely the same shape, they each as summer ap- proaches, diminish ir value, that is say, they each gradually lose a poicion of their cold, until, long before the Lower Canada ice has melted^ the English ice has been converted into luke-warm water. The above theory is so clearly understood in North America, that the inhabitants of Boston, who annually store for exportation immense quantities of Wenham ice, and who know quite well that cold ice will meet the markets in India, while the warmer article melts on the passage, talk of their " crops of ice" just as an English farmer talks of his crop of wheat. The various forms of sleighs which are used in Canada it would be impossible to describe ; some are handsomely painted bright scarlet, highly varnished, richly carved, and ornamented with valuable black bear-skin " robes," as they are termed ; others are composed of an old English packing-case placed on runners. Howe- ^er, whatever may be their construc- tion, their proprietors, ricL or poor, appear alike happy. One healthy clear morning, accompanied by a friend, I was enjoying my early walk along the cliff which overhangs the bay of Tnonto, when I saw a 18 'THE EMIGRANT. Chap. I, runaway horse and sleigh approaching me at full gallop, and it was not until both were within a few yards of the precipice that the animal, suddenly see- ing his danger, threw himself on his haunches, and then, turning from the death that had stared him ill the face, stood as if riveted to the ground. On going up to the sleigh, which was one of very- humble fabric, I found seated in it a wild young Ir /^hman, and, as he did not appear to be at all sen- sible of the danger from which he had just been pro- videntially preserved, I said to him, " You have had a most narrow escape, my man /" ^ " Oeh I your honour,'' he replied, " it '« nothing at arl, Ifsjist this bar as titaheshis hacks F' And, to show me what he meant, he pulled at the reins with all his strength, till the splinter-bar touched the poor creature's thigh, when instantly this son of Erin, looking as happy as if he had just demonstrated a problem, triumphantly exclaimed, " There H is aginP' And away he went, if possible, faster than before. I watched him till the horse galloped with him completely out of my sight : indeed, he vanished like a meteor in the sky ; and where he came from, and where he went, I am ignorant to this day. The Canada spring commences with a brilliant, but rather an uncomfortable admixture of warm d^ys and of freezing cold nights. By the beginning of April the sun is as hot as it is in the south" of France ; the roads are slushy until sunset, when in a few minutes they congeal, and become covered with ice. Chap. I. A NEW SKY. 19 As this operation continues, as the sun strengthens, and as the day lengthens, the thick stratum of snow, which has so long covered the surface of the country, gradually melts by day and freezes by night, until, the heat increasing and the cold diminishing, the black ground begins to appp-^ " ; and no sooner does the earth, escaping from its wearisome imprisonment, once again see daylight, than, without waiting for a general clearance, there start up in each of these little oases in the desert of snow that surrounds them a variety of small lovely flowers, which seem to have burst into existence as if to hail the arrival and orna- ment the happy path of approacliing spring. But while this joyful process is proceeding in the vegetable world, the interminable forest is once again becoming the cheerful scene of animal life. The old bear slowly descends, tail foremost, from the lofty chamber in which he has so long be^n dormant. The air is filled — the light of heaven is occasionally almost intercepted from morning till night — by clouds of pigeons, which, as the har- bingers of spring, are seen for many days flying over the forest, guided, 1 have been credibly informed, by a miraculous instinct, not only to the particular remote region in which they were reared, but to build their own nests in the very trees upon whose branches each indi\ idual bird was hatched ! but if, as is well known, they are instinctively led to the country of their birth, it is not improbable that, when they reach it, they will readily search out for themselves their own ' * homes." c 2 20 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. 1. In a very short time the whole surface of the country becomes cleared from snow, and the effect of the change is most interesting ; for instance, on my arrival in Canada I found everything around me buried in snow, and my lonely house standing ap- parently in a white barren desolate field, to which my eyes soon became accustomed. But as soon as the spring removed this covering, flower borders of all shapes, a green lawn, and gravel walks meandering in various directions, made their welcome appear- ance, until I found myself the possessor — and if it had not been for English politics I should have been the happy possessor — of a beautiful English garden, the monument of the good taste of Sir Peregrine and Lady Sarah Maitland, who many years ago had planned it and had stocked it with roses and shrubs of the best description. But "all is not gold that glitters ;" and accord- ingly, though spring ornaments almost beyond the powers of description the surface of Canada, she is no respecter of the Queen's highways, but, on the con- trary, creates dreadful havoc among roads of all de- scriptions. The departure of the snow is followed by a general blistering and up-wrenching of the surface of the earth, which for some weeks remains what is called " rotten," and which, especially in the roads, is so troublesome to ride over, that at this period a well- moimted horseman can occasionally hardly travel above twenty or twenty-five miles in a day : indeed I have sometimes come to narrow quagmires in the roads wliich I have stoud gazing at lor minutes in Chap. I. A NEW SKY. 21 despair, and whicli it was almost impracticable to cross at any price. However, the first heavy rains settle the ground, and then, the rush of vegetation being as beautiful as it is surprising, it is most interesting to ramble in solitude through the secret recesses of the forest. The enjoyment, however, without f t pre- caution, is a very dangerous one, as it a- almost incredible how quickly a stranger loses his reckon- ing, and becomes lost in the lab3rrinth that surrounds him. In the lonely rides I was in the habit of enjoying, I took some pains to make myself intelligent upon this point, but with very, little success ; and though I endeavoured to carry in my head a "carte du pays," I often suddenly felt myself completely be- wildered. On these occasions, however, without any diffi- culty I always extricated myself from all danger by the following process : — Throwing my hat on the ground, I rode from it in any direction, to a distance greater than that which I knew to exist between me and the road I was anxious to regain, returning on the footmarks of my horse to my hat. I then radiated from it in any other direction, and, returning, repeated the trials until, taking the right direction, I at last recovered the road ; whereas, if, without method, I had wan- dered among the trees in search of it, I might, and most probably should, have been lost — a victim to the allurements and beauties of spring. Of course, 22 THE EMIGRAJS^T. Chap. I» on reacliing the road I had to recover the hat to which my head had been so much indebted. The storms which occasionally reign and rage over the forest are very similar to those which characterise the tropics. The sudden explosion and loud rolls of thunder are not only awful to hear, but this cannonading from heaven generally leaves be- hind it proofs of its having been composed of shot as well as of powder ; indeed in my rides through the forest I became intimately acquainted with several trees that had been struck by lightning. In one there was merely a deep furrowed line from the top of the stem to the earth ; but in others the effect had been terrific. The lightning had descended down the bark of the tree till it had met a knot, or something which, turning it inwards, had there caused it to explode. In these cases, a huge stump, fifteen or twenty feet high, was left standing, while around it, in all directions, the remainder of the tree was to be seen lying on the ground literally shivered to atoms. In one immense pine the electric mine had burst in the heart of its victim within a foot of the ground. The tree in its stupendous fall snapped about fifty feet above the ground another pine-tree, about forty feet distant, and, resting and remaining on the top of this lofty column, the two trees formed a right* angled triangle of most extraordinary appearance, standing in the forest as if to demonstrate the irre- sistible power of one of the most powerful agents of nature. Chap. I. A NEW SKY. 23 But awful as are the effects of the lightning of heaven, there are occasionally in Canada sudden squalls of wind which create havoc on a much larger scale. Indeed, when a traveller inquires for a road to any particular place, he is often told to proceed in a certain direction, " until he comes to a hurricane ;" which means, until he finds in the lone wilderness a parcel of trees torn up by the roots, and m indescribable confusion lying prostrate on the ground. From the foregoing sketches, I think it will appear that, although the climate of England is said to be the most uncertain on the surface of the globe, that of North America is infinitely more variable, as well as exposed to greater vicissitudes. In the latter country not only do the extremes of hea.t in summer, and of cold in winter, create an extensive range of temperature, in England tethered to very narrow limits, but in Canada the sudden alternations of temperature which attend every change of wind constantly cause in the course of the day, and even in a few hours, a change of cli- mate of say forty degrees of Fahrenheit. These sudden changes generally last three days : for instance, a heavy rain almost invariably con- tinues that time; so does a paroxysm of intense cold ; so does every unusually heavy gale of wind ; and so does every occasional "sweating sickness" of extreme heat. On the whole, I am of opinion that the climate of Canada is more healthy and invigorating than that 24 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. !• of England, although it is more destructive to the skin, hair, teeth, and ot^^^r items of what is termed " personal appearance.' i short, those who ad- mire pretty children, grc . fields, and out-of-doors exercise may justly continue to sing, — " Through pleasures and palaces though we may roam, n Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." Chap. II. ( 25 ) CHAPTER II. THE BACK-WOODS. i Among the list of hackneyed expressions which for years I have been in the habit of repeating to myself, [there is no one that comes oftener uppermost in my [mind than the words — " England, with all thy faults, I love thee still !" At times when I have seen our merchants of [London lend millions after millions of money, first, [to countries in South America, whose geographical )osition I had reason to know they could not, with my one of their fingers, point out on a chart of the Iglobe; and then, nothing daunted by defeat, to [northern states in the same hemisphere, whose in- stitutions everybody knows to be recipient, without ability to repay ; when again I witnessed the mania [this country evinced for working transatlantic mines, md which it still evinces for expending hundreds of lillions of money in the projection of British and of foreign railroads, the capital of the empire has not )0wer to construct, I own I have occasionally found [it difficult to maintain the feelings of respect so justly due to the monosyllables " John Bull." On [the other hand, "with all his faults," it is, I think, [impossible for his bitterest enemy to help acknow- ledging that there is something generous and 26 THE EMIGRANT. Chap, II. amiable beyond description — noble and high-minded beyond example — and evidently productive of far- sighted political results, in the fact, that every day, be the weather what it may, Jane, his beloved wife, presents to him one thousand babies more than the number he had requested of her to replace those members of his family who had just died ! Now inasmuch as this deliberate increase to our population of 365,000 babies a year (which equals the number of men, women, and children in the counties of Hampshire or of Essex) as clearly evinces a desire, as it creates a necessity, for Great Britain to people, by emigration, some of those vast regions of the globe which, since the creation of the world, have remained uninhabited, it is wonderful to ob- serve how admirably Nature has parcelled out to the diflPerent nations of mankind the cultivation of those territories which are best suited to their respective characters and physical strength. For instance, the indolent inhabitants of Old Spain and of Portugal were led, apparently by blind chance, to discover, in the New World, plains of vast extent, situated in a genial climate, which, without any culture, were fitted for the breeding of almost every animal that forms the food of man. On the other hand, by the same mariner's com- pass, the Anglo-Saxon race were conducted to a region visited by intense cold, and covered with trees of such enormous size that emigration to this country has justly been termed *' War with the Wilderness;^' and certainly any man who has ex- %np. II. THE BACK-W00D3. 27 )erienced in it the amount of fatigue to be endured [n cutting dcvvn a single tree, in ploughing among Its roots, and in sowing and reaping around its Btump, must feel that it required a strong, healthy, lardy race of men to clear a country in which the pettier has, as it were, to engage himself in a duel rith each and every individual tree of the inter* linable forest that surrounds him. But, on the discovery of America, Nature not only [ed the British to the battle-ground I have described, )ut by instinctive feeling she has since conducted, md continues to conduct to it, the individuals of our country best suited to the task. It would be incorrect to state that the many thousands of emigrants that have annually sailed for )ur North American provinces have been particu- larly athletic; but, as the French army truly say, C*est le coeur aui fait le grenadier," so it may iccurately be stated that, with a few exceptions, they lust have been persons of rather more enterprising lisposition than their comrades whom they left at lome ; indeed, when I have reflected on the ex- )ense, anxiety, and uncertainty attendant upon emigrating to a new world, I have often felt as- tonished that labourers, tethered to their parish by so many ties and prejudices, should ever have sum- bioned courage enough to make up their minds to sail with their families in a ship for countries in [which, to say the least, they must land ignorant, [friendless, and unknown. But besides a certain amount of enterprise, there 28 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. II. ■r,,'!'. W' W'^. m has, I believe, existed in the minds of all emigrants some little propulsive feeling or other — oftener good than bad — that has tended to put them on, as it is termed, their mettle, and to make them decide on a change of scene ; indeed, when I was in Canada I often thought that it would have been as amusing to have kept a list of the various different reasons that had propelled from England those who were around me, as it is to read in Gil Bias the dissimilar causes which had brought together the motley inmates of Eolando's cave. .^ For instance, one very gallant naval officer told me that, after having obtained two steps in his pro- fession, by actions with the enemy, he waited on "William IV., when he was Lord High Admiral, to ask for a ship, in reply to which request he was good-humouredly told that " he was too ymngP That about two years afterwards, 0:1 making a similar request to Sir James Graham, who had just succeeded to be First Lord of the Admiralty, with grave dignity he was told " that the policy of the Government was to bring forward young men, and that * he. was too old ;' and so," said my friend, " I in.«itantly turned on my heel, and, declaring I would never again set my foot in the Admiralty till I was sent for, I came out to Canada " The inability of the Government to attend to every just claim brought before its consideration drove crowds of distinguished officers of both ser- vices to the back-woods. Many fine fellows came out because they could not live without shooting, Chap. 11. ■ <^^'«P- "• THE BACK-WOODS. 29 and did not choose to be poachers ; a vast number crossed over because they had " heavy families and small incomes ;*' and one of the most loyal men I was acquainted with, and to whose protection I had afterwards occasion to be indebted, in answer to some questions I was inquisitively putting to him, stopped me by honestly saying, as he looked me full in the face, "My character, Sir, won*t bear investigation!" Of course, a proportion of the emigrants to our North American Colonies belong to that philan- thropic class of men who, under the appellation of Socialists, Communistes, or Liberals, are to be met with in every comer of the Old World. Their doctrine is. Community of goods : but they have no goods at all. They preach — Division of property : but they have no property to divide. So that their principle is ; — not so much to give all they have (for tliey have nothing to give) to other people ; — as that other people should give all they have to them. Propelled by these motley reasons, feelings, griev- ances, and doctrines, many thousands of families and individuals of various grades (in 1842 their number exceeded 42,000) have annually taken leave of the shores of Great Britain to seek refuge in the splendid wilderness of Canada, or, in other words sick of " vain pomp and glory," have left the old world for what they hoped would be a better. Now, just as seafaring men declare that after Thames soup has undergone fermentation — during I which process it emits from the bung-hole of the casks which contain it a gas highly offensive, and 90 THE EMIGRANT. ■ i i m Chap. II. even inflammable — it becomes the clearest, tlie sweetest, and most wholesome water that can be taken to scl, so do the same sort of clarilication and the same results take place in the moral feelings of the crowds of emigrants I have described. On their arrival at their various locations, for a short time they fancy, or rather they really and truly feel, more or less strongly, that there is some- thing very fine in the theory of having apparently got rid of all the musty materials of " Church and State ;" and, revelling in this sentiment, they for a short time enjoy the novel luxury of being able to dress as they like, do as they like, go where they like. They appreciate the happiness of living in a land in which the Old Country's servile custom of touching the hat does not exist, in which every carter and waggoner rides instead of walks, and in which there are no purse-proud millionnaires, no dukes, duchesses, lords, ladies, parsons, parish-officers, beadles, poor-law commissioners, or paupers; no tithes and no taxes. But after the mind, like the Thames water, has continued for a sufficient time in this state of pleasing fermentation, the feelings I have just de- scribed begin gradually to subside. Some fly away, and some crawl away; some evaporate, and some sink, until the judgment, his best friend, clearly points out to the emigrant that, after all, ** liberty and equality," like many- other resplendent sub- stances, contain ^*a their compositions a considerable quantity of alloy. Chap. II, ■ ch^p. II. TUE BACK-WOODS. 31 One of the first wants, that, like a flower in the wilderness, springs up in the mind of a back- woodsman, is to attend occasionally a place of wor- ship. Solitude has first slightly introduced, and has then welcomed to his mind, more serious reflec- tions than any it had previously entertained. The thunder and the lightning of heaven, the sudden storms, the intense cold, the magnificent colouring of the sky, the buoyant air, the gorgeous sunsets, one after another, have sometimes sternly and some- times smilingly imparted to him truths which have gi-adually explaii:.ed to him that there is something very fearful as well as fidlacious in the idea of any human being boasting to himself of being " inde- pendent" of that power so eminently conspicuous in the wilderness of America ! As soon as this want lias taken firm root in the heart, it soon produces its natm-al fruit. The emi- grants meet, consult, arrange with each other, sub- scribe according to their means a few dollars, a few pounds, or a few hundred pounds (one of the most powerful axe-men in Upper Canada expended on this object upwards of a thousand pounds); the sunple edifice rapidly grows up — is roofed in — is furnished with benches — until at last on some bright sabbath-day, a small bell, fixed within a little turret, on its summit, is heard slowly tolling in the forest. From various directions sleighs and waggons, each laden with at least one man, a woman or two, and some little children, are seen converging towards it ; and it would be impossible to describe the over- 32 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. IL whelming feelings of the various members of the congregation, of both sexes and of all ages, when their selected and respected minister, clad in a de- cent white surplice, for the first time opens his lips to pronounce to them those time-honoured words which declare that when the wicked man tumeth away from the wickedness he has committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive. The thunder and the hurricane have now lost all their terrors, the sunshine has suddenly become a source of legitimate enjoyment, the rude log-hut an', abode of happiness and contentment, and thus the emigrant every day more and more appreciates the blessing which is rewarding him for having erected in the wilderness his own established church. Among the various good feelings that subsequently vegetate in his mind, is that of filial attachment to Old England. The banished heart first yearns for the crooked lanes, green fields, and rosy cheeks which adorn the surface of the old country ; and then, not satisfied with loving the land, it soon learns to love all who live in it. But while these British sentiments are growing, local politics first assail and soon apparently entirely engross the emigrant's attention. He has perhaps applied to be made a magistrate, and has seen his neighbour appointed instead ; he has written to the Governor for a patent for the land he is clearing, and has received no answer ; his nearest neighbour Chap. II. THE BACK-WOODS. 33 and intimate friend is a reformer, who has told him that " Keform " would very likely give him a road ; would perhaps get him some appointment ; would indemnify him in some way for the cow that died ;, in short, he understands, and firmly believes, that any change would do him good, and that, even if it did not, at all events it would be a change ; and so, he is ready to vote for the man that is already pro- mising to effect " a change." Now it is almost inconceivable how eagerly the backwoodsman engages in local politics of this nature. Every angiy word he utters inflames his own angry feelings. He disputes with one neighbour, and allies himself with another ; and as neither the one nor the other, nor any of them, have any knowledge of what is really going on at the seat of Grovemment, except what they read in provincial newspapers, often of the vilest description, a nmrmur is created which, by people in England who do not under- stand emigrants' language, is supposed very clearly to threaten separation from the mother country! Whereas, the moment that question is undisguisedly proposed, the whole fabric of local politics falls to the ground ; party feelings are forgotten, and from all directions the Irishman, Scotchman, and English- man, are seen worming their way through the trees, to join together hand in hand to maintain connexion with " Old England," whom it may truly be said they love infinitely more dearly and more devotedly than do her own children at home. With respect to the Canadian population the same 34 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. II. feelings exist. They dispute and quarrel among each other quite as vigorously as their brethren from the old country ; yet although they have never seen our green lanes, and can therefore have no filial attachment to them, they are most decidedly more proud of the title of " British subjects " than people are in England; and for this plain reason, that, having throughout their whole lives had an oppor- tunity not only of beholding immediately before their eyes, but of studying, the fallacy of " Eepub- lican government," they infinitely better understand and appreciate than we do the inestimable superiority of British institutions. * In no part of the world which it has been my fortune to visit have I ever met with a body of British subjects more enlightened and unprejudiced than the native-born Upper Canadians. They have English blood in their veins — have English tongues, English hearts, English heads — have received an English education, and are well versed in English history. But with an English- man's average stock of knowledge, they are divested of many of his prejudices. On the subject of govern- ment they are infinitely more enlightened than he is ; not instinctively or intuitively, but simply be- cause, from the days of their childhood, they have enjoyed advantages of observing both sides of a most important question, of which Englishmen can only see one. In short, aa political engineers, under- standing the mechanism of democracy as well as that of monarchy, they see infinitely clearer than Chap. II. THE BACK-WOODS. 35 our great statesmen in England possibly can do how subtle and minute are the changes by which the latter system can eventually be converted into the former. For instance, an Englishman improperly deals with British institutions as our sailors very properly treat a seventy-four gun ship. If any trifling object appears on the ocean, they all run in a body either to windward or to leeward, for they know the old ship will bear it. The carpenter makes an incision here, and with a sledge hammer drives a spike-nail in there. He clears the decks for action ; musketry and grape stick in this bulwark, cannon-shot go slap through that, but the good old ship does not feel it : in fact, if the master will but keep her oiF the rocks, her crew truly declare there is no rough usage that can hurt her. And so it is with many of our great and good men in England. They see no harm, as regards the safety of British institutions, in taking out a little screw here, and in cutting asunder a plank there ; see nothing to fear in pecking a stone or two out of this arch, or in diminishing the thickness of that old-fashioned beam. " A little extension of suffrage," they say, * ' surely can't hurt a great country like this ! A conces- sion or two to public opinion will surely do no harm ; in short, if we oppose actual revolution, there is no moderately rough treatment that our institutions are not strong enough to bear." On the other hand, an Upper Canadian deals with British institutions as an Indian manages his bark canoe. D 2 36 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. II. The red pilot is not afraid of the storm, but he unceasingly watches every approaching wave, takes care to sit exactly in the middle of his bandbox, not to rise up in it too suddenly, to step along it lightly, and above all, never to drop into it any heavy weight that might shiver or even shake the bottom of the frail bark ; and thus he manages to traverse waves in which many a stout vessel has foundered. A very few facts will practically exemplify the meaning of the latter comparison. Within a week after my arrival at Toronto, I had to receive an address from the Speaker and Commons* House of Assembly ; and on inquiring in what manner I was to perform the part in the ceremony allotted to me, I was informed that 1 was to sit very still on a large scarlet chair with my hat on. The first half was evidently an easy job ; but the latter was really revolting to my habits and feelings, and, as I thought I ought to try and govern by my head and not by my hat, I felt convinced that the former would risk nothing by being for a few minutes divorced from the latter, and accord- ingly I determined with white gloves to hold the thing in my hands; and several of my English party quite agreed with me in thinking my project not only an innocent but a virtuous act of common courtesy : however, I happened to mention my in- tention to an Upper Canadian, and never shall I forget the look of silent scorn with which he listened to me. I really quite quailed beneath the reproof, Chap. II. THE BACK-WOODS. 37 which, without the utterance of a word, and after ecannirig me from head to foot, his mild intelligent faithful countenance read to me, and which but too clearly expressed — " What ! to purchase five minutes* loathsome popularity, will you barter one of the few remaining prerogatives of the British Crown ? Will you, for the vain hope of conciliating insatiable Democracy, meanly sell to it one of the distinctions of your station ? Miserable man ! beware, before it be too late, of surrendering piecemeal that which it is your duty to maintain, and for which, after all, you will only receive in exchange contumely and contempt !" I remained for a few seconds as mute as my Canadian Mentor, and then, without taking any notice of the look with which he had been chastising me, I spoke to him on some other subjects, but I did not forget the picture I had seen, and accordingly my hat was tight enough on my head when the Speaker bowed to it, and 1 shall ever feel indebted to that man for the sound political lesson he taught me. I could mention many similar reproofs I verbally received fr-om native-born Canadians, especially one that very strongly condemned me for a desire I had innocently entertained to go once — merely as a com- pliment — to the Presbyterian church, which, when quartered in Scotland, I had often attended ; but 1 was gravely admonished by the son of the soil on which I stood, that, although I ought to protect all churches, yet, as the representative of the Esta- 38 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. II. blished Church, I ought to take part in no other service but my own ; and a few moments' reflection told me that he "was right) and as a further illus- tration of this transatlantic doctrine, I may state that, when the bold, venerable, and respected leader of the Church of England in Upper Canada was lately appointed "Bishop of Toronto," he was not only immediately addressed by the title of " My Lord," but his humble dwelling was, and to this day is, designated " The Palace" for the simple reason that the emigrants and native-born inhabitants of the province saw no reason for being ashamed of British institutions, or of the distinctions which characterize them; and yet how astonishing it is that people in England, both Whigs and Tories, will persist in declaring that monarchical pomp cannot possibly be popular in our British North American Colonies, and therefore that it ought not to be maintained there ! In reply to this incorrect, unsound, and most un- fortunate doctrine, I will, to what I have just stated, only add, that the Irish, Scotch, English, and native inhabitants of Canada, appeared to me to be quite as anxious that I should ride good horses as I was myself — that they liked to see a ^^^ell-appointed carriage — and that, though it be a highly popular, it is really a vulgar error to believe, that if I had ridden about in a shooting jacket, distributing stunted nods and talking through my nose, I should have prevented the rebellion. Whereas, on the contrary, I found the general feeling of the Canadian people to be, Chap. II. THE BACK-WOODS. 39 that if, contrary to the policy with which they had been so long afflicted, I would but avow imcom- promising hatred to democracy; if I would but oppose, for them, irresponsible, or, as it is jeeringly termed, " respowsible government — a non respon- dendo;" in short, if I would maintain the pre- rogatives of the British monarchy, they would maintain its glorious institutions ; and accordingly, as soon as I printed and circulated throughout the province the following words : — " The people of Upper Canada detest democracy, revere their constlLutional charter, and are staunch in allegiance to their king. *' Never will I allow the power and patronage of this thinly-peopled province to be transferred from His Majesty's representative to the domination of * a Provincial Ministry,' an irresponsible and self-con- stituted cabinet " — The moment I published the above declaration, the British emigrants and the Canadian people rose almost en masse, and drove from their house of representatives Mr. Bidwell, Mr. McKenzie, and every other prominent supporter of *' responsible " government. ' And yet, notwithstanding this undeniable his- torical fact, strange to say, thousands of great and good men in England, of all parties, persist in believing, as obstinately as ever, that our noble institutions are unsuited to the soil of America ! 40 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. III. CHAPTEE III. SERGEANT NEILL. The breaking up of the ice in the rivers of North America is one of the most wonderful operations exhibited by nature on that Continent. By the beginning of April, although the sun has attained very considerable power, yet the ice in the rivers is so thick, and its temperature so many degrees below freezing, that little or ho effect is produced upon it in the middle of- the stream. The banks, however, of the river, receiving heat from the sim, treacherously melt that portion of the ice which immediately touches them, and this operation con- tinues until a space of blue water intervenes between the shore and the ice sufficient to prevent any one from passing on foot from the one to the other, and yet, long after this period, the ice in the middle of the stream remains strong enough to bear artillery or carriages of any weight. Now, it is evident that, if a river throughout its course were straight and of equal breadth, the current, without waiting until the sun should melt the ice, would carry it bodily away into the ocean so soon as the banks ceased to hold it. Kivers, however, being more or less tortuous, and Chap. III. SERGEANT NEILL. 41 containing generally little islands and rocks, it be- came necessary for Nature to resort to an admixture in about equal parts of fair means and foul, or, in other words, to combine the persuasive powers of the sun with the rude violence of the torrent, and thus the dense stratum of ice which covers the surface of the river finds itself between two power- ful enemies, one of which, by the constant appli- cation of heat, is trying to melt it, while the other, as it glides beneath it, is exerting a never-ceasing efibrt to drag it towards the sea. Any one who in swimming down a stream has ever chanfced to grasp the branch of a tree overhanging the banks, has no doubt found it almost impossible to hold on ; indeed if merely the palm of the hand be applied to the surface of running water, a rude guess may be made of the force a large river throughout its whole course must exert against a covering of ice which, standing stock still, refuses to partake oi" its course. As the sun strengthens, the velocity and power of the current is hourly increased by the melting of the snow, which, by wrenching the ice upwards, isolates it, excepting at particular bends and turns of the river, that retain or jam the whole mass. At these fortresses, as they may be termed, the pressure on the ice becomes immense ; bit after bit breaks, until, each obstruction having given way, the whole mass is retained at some single point only. This last conflict between the elements of nature is truly terrific ; fields of ice are forced upon the land, and then, grinding, squeezing, undermining, and 42 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. III. raising each other, form impending rocks from 50 to 80 feet high ! While the resistance of the ice is daily decreasing, the strength of the never-tiring current is hourly increasing, until by the swelling of the water the ice is either lifted above the insular obstruction that impeded it, or, unable any longer to resist, it is forcibly rent asunder. The hour of victory has now arrived, the spring of another new year has once again conquered the winter ; the liquid water has overcome its frozen enemy, and the whole of the ice, writliing and breaking up in all directions, like a vanquished army, at first slowly surrenders its position, and then by a " sauve-qui- pent " movement retreats in confusion proportionate to its mass. I twice happened to succeed in witnessing the breaking up of the ice of the Humber, a small river in the neighbourhood of Toronto. The floods which had wrenched up the ice had floated a large quan- tity of timber of every possible description, and, as soon as the great movement commenced, these trees and the ice were hurried before my eyes in inde- scribable confusion. Every piece of ice, whatever might be its shape or size, as it proceeded, was either revolving horizontally, or rearing up on end until it reeled over; sometimes a tree, striking against the bottom, would slowly rise up, and for a moment stand erect as if it grew out of the river ; at other times it would, apparently for variety's sake, stand on its head with its roots uppermost and then turn over ; sometimes the ice as it proceeded Chap. III. SERGEANT NEILL. 43 would rise up like a house and cliiraiieys, and then, rolling head over heels, sink, and leave in its place clear water. In a few hours, however, this turmoil was com- pletely at an end, the torrent had diminished, the stream had shrunk to its ordinary limits, and nothing remained to tell of the struggle and the chancemedley confusion I had witnessed but some white little islands of ice, intermixed with dark masses of timber, floatincr off the mouth of the river in the deep blue lake. In the different regions of the globe it has been my fortune to visit, I have always experienced great pleasure in pausing for a few minutes at the various spots which have been distinguished by some feat or other of British enterprise, British mercy, British honesty, British generosity, or British valour. About the time I was in Canada a trifling cir- cumstance occurred on the breaking up of the ice, which I feel proud to record. In the middle of the great St. Lawrence there is, nearly opposite Montreal, an island called St. Helens, between which and the shore the stream, about three quarters of a mile broad, runs with very great rapidity, and yet, notwithstanding this current, the intense cold of winter invariably freezes its surface. The winter I am speaking of was unusually severe, and the ice on the St. Lawrence particularly thick ; however, while the river beneath was rush- 44 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. III. i U',!; ing towards the sea, the ice was waiting in abeyance in the middle of the stream until the narrow iast- ness between Montreal and St. Helens should burst and allow the whole mass to break into pieces, and then in stupendous confusion to hurry downwards towards Quebec. On St. Helens there was quartered a small detach- ment of troops, and, v'hile the breaking up of the ice was momently expected, many of the soldiers, muffled in their great-coats, with thick storm-gloves on their hands, and with a piece of fur attached to their caps to protect their ears from being frozen, were on the ice employed in attending to the road ' across it to Montreal. After a short suspense, which increased rather than allayed their excitement, a deep thundering noise announced to them that the process I have described had commenced. The ice before them writhed, heaved up, burst, broke into fragments, and the whole mass, excepting a small portion, which, remaining riveted to the shore of St. Helens, formed an artificial pier with deep water beneath it, gra- dually moved downwards. Just at this moment of inte'^ terest, a little girl, the daughter of an art' ^^n on the island, was seen on the ice in the . ..idle of the river in an attitude of agony and alarm. Imprudently and unobserved she had attempted to cross over to Mont- real, and was hardly half-way when the ice, both above, below her, and in all directions, gav6 way. The child's fate seemed inevitable, and it was exciting ;^!;lVl 'tt Chap. III. SERGEANT NEILL. 45 various sensations in the minds, and various excla- mations from the mouths of the soldiers, when some- thing within the breast of Thomas Neill, a young sergeant in the 24th regiment, who happened to be nearer to her than the rest, distinctly uttered to him the monosyllables " Qnich march! " and m obedience thereto, fixing his eyes on the child as on a parade bandarole, he steadily proceeded towards her. Sometimes just before him, sometimes just behind him, and sometimes on either side, an immense piece of ice would pause, rear up an end, and roll over, so as occasionally to hide him altogether from view. Sometimes he was seen jmnping upon a piece that was beginning to rise, and then, like a white bear, carefully clambering down a piece that was beginning to sink ; however, onwards he pro- ceeded, until, reaching the little island of ice on which the poor child stood, with the feelings of calm triumph with which he would have sunnounted a breach, he firmly grasped her by the hand. By this time he had been floated down the river nearly out of sight of his comrades. However, some of them, having run to their barracks for spy-glasses, distinctly beheld him about two miles below them, sometimes leading the child in his hand, sometimes carrying her in his arms, sometimes "halting,'* sometimes running " double quick ;" and in this dangerous predicament he continued for six miles, until, after passing Longeuil, he was given up by his comrades as — lost. He remained with the little girl floating down 46 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. Ill^ the middle of the river for a considerable time ; at last, towards evening, they wer^ discovered by some French Canadians, who, at no small risk, humanely pushed off in a canoe to their assistance, and thus rescued them both from their perilous situation. The Canadians took them to their home ; at last, in due time, they returned to St. Helens. The child was happily restored to its parents, and Ser- geant Neill quietly returned to his ' ;rracks. Colour-Sergeant William Deliney, and Private George Morgan, of the 24th Eegiment, now at Chatham, were eye-witnesses of the above occur- rence. // Chap. IV. THE GRENADIERS' POND. 47 CHAPTER IV. THE GRENADIERS' POND. Whenever a man has a favourite propensity, good or evil, it matters not a Straw, his mind is always exceedingly clever in finding out reasons for its in- dulgence ; and accordingly, as soon as I commenced my duties at Toronto, something within me strenu- ously advised that I should every day take a good long ride. " You will never," said my mentor, " be able to get through your business without it ! Your constitution will become enervated ; you will get sallow, yellow, bitter-minded, sour-tempered ; you will die if you don't take your usual exer- cise I" Not wishing to be considered obstinate, I yielded to this advice, and I believe I may say that up to the period of the rebellion I never departed from it for a single day : indeed I am confident that, under Providence, the preservation of my health has been the reward of my dutiful obedience. In Canada, as soon as the hand of winter pamts the ground white, everybody, muffled in fur, in- stinctively steps into a sleigh ; and as matter, pliilo- sophers say, cannot occupy two places at the same time, it follows that nobody can be seen on what 48 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. It. sailors call " the outside of a horse." To this rule, however, I formed, I believe, a solitary exception. Whether it was hot or cold — whether it rained, blew, or froze — sooner or later I managed every day, imattended by any one, to get a canter through the dark pine-forest which immediately surrounds To- ronto, and then across the Humber Plains, a distance of about fourteen miles. In spring, summer, and autumn, this wholesome exercise was indescribably delightful, especially be- cause its solitude afforded me opportunity quietly to reflect on various subjects which were weighing heavily on my mind. In winter this recreation was also highly exhilarating; but as I was constantly detained by business until the blood-red sun was within a few inches of the horizon, and had therefore oftentimes to ride through the forest in the dark, it was necessary to take due precaution to prevent being frozen ; and, indeed, after being all day in a iiouse heated by a stove, I foimd that it often re- quired some little resolution to face a temperature occasionally forty or fifty degrees below freezing. However, as soon as through the double windows of my room I saw my horse walking backwards and forwards, waiting for me, I always felt encouraged to make my toilette, of which I will only say that, like that of a Turkish lady, it left little but my eyes imcovered. This protection I found quite impervious to the weather ; and although if I had lost one of my fur gloves I should have lost a hand, and if I had been 1 Chap. IV. THE grenadiers' POND. 49 stripped of* my fur coat should have been frozen, yet, as no such accidents were likely to befall me, I proceeded in daylight or in darkness along my usual track, the sensation of cantering through snow very nearly resembling that of riding across ploughed land. One lovely day in spring I had crossed the Hum- ber Plains, which in high beauty were covered with shrubs, little flowers of various descriptions — wild strawberries, wild raspberries, and immense scarlet tiger-lilies in full bloom — and had reached the shore of Lake Ontario at a point about three miles from Toronto, when I saw immediately before me a group of men stooping down to raise from the' ground something which, on my riding up to them, proved to be an enormous land-tortoise, that had burrowed into the sand of the beach. After laying the creature on its back the men continued with their hands to excavate the sand, in search, as they told me, of eggs; and accordingly in a short time they brought to light almost a hatfuU of them, as round as, and about the size of, canister shot. On conversing with the men, I found that, as payment for her eggs, they were going to roast the poor mother — an unjust arrangement, which by a little money I managed to prevent; and I had scarcely proceeded a hundred yards when I came to two men standing still, and holding between them a weak- looking middle-aged man, who did not appear to be offering any resistance, and whose countenance, the moment I beheld it, proclaimed that he was insane. 50 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. rv. " What had we better do with this poor fellow?'* said one of his captors to me ; "he wants to make away with himself, and says he is determined to drown himself, either in the Lake or in the Grena- diers' Pond here !" ^ Now, the beautiful blue Lake, covered with a healthy ripple, and extending as far as the eye could reach, was close to us ; and on the other side, within fifty yards of us, there was hidden in the forest a horrid miry little spot, called the Grenadiers' Pond, because a party of English soldiers, in endea- vouring, during the war, to cross it in a boat, had been upset, after floundering in the m\id had ( sunk in it, and were there stiU. Poor fellows! I had often shuddered at their fate, as I looked at the spot, — an image of John Bunyan's " Slough of Despond." As there was no asylum for lunatics in the pro- vince, it required some few moments' consideration to determine what to do ; at last, after a short con- versation with the men, I arranged with them that they should take their prisoner to the hospital at Toronto ; and as I had to ride by it in my way home, I told them I would see that, by the time they arrived, proper arrangements should be made for treating him with kindness and attention. The poor maniac paid no attention whatever to what we were saying: he offered no resistance; made not the slightest effort to escape; but never shall I forget the wistful expression of counttmance with which he kept turning his haggard face some- ip. rv. ow?" make ed to rena- u ith a } eye : side, n the idieTs' jndea- boat, d had ws! I at the gh of e pro- iration t con- that tal at Y way 3 time made / ver to tance ; never snance some- Chap. IV. THE GRENADIERS' POND. 51 \ n times towards the blue Lake, and sometimes towards the bank which concealed from us the Grenadiers* Pond; in short, it was painfully evident that the affections of this nameless, friendless being were, as nearly as possible, divided between both, and that, weaned from every other attachment to this world, or to the next, his agonising distraction solely pro- ceeded from the difficulty of determining which of two delightful resting-places to prefer ; indeed, so strong was his infatuation, that, as the two men led him between them before me, a stranger would have fancied that, instead of leading him away from death, we were conducting him to execution ; — ^that his wife and children were behind him; and that he was looking back first over one shoulder, and then over another, to offer them one more blessing, and to bid them another — and then another — last — " fareweU 1" When the party reached the hospital, they found everything ready for the man's reception, and next morning I was happy to learn that he appeared per- fectly calm and tranquil. On the following day, however, when I inquired, I was informed he had managed a few hours ago to escape, and that he was gone — they knew not where I , I knew well enough where he was gone, and, it being in my daily track, I immediately rode to the road I have described, between the Lake and the Grenadiers' Pond. He was not there; but it was afterwards ascertained that, within an hour after he had escaped from the hospital, a man exactly an- £ 2 52 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. IV. swering his description had been seen walking hur- riedly up and down the narrow space I have de- scribed, and that, when the person who had passed him turned his head back to look for him, he had, to his sui'prise, completely disappeared ! If he had gone into the lake, his body, in due time, would have been washed on shore ; but as this did not happen, well knowing where he was, I often rode to the Grenadiers' Pond to indulge for a few moments in feelings SACRED 11 TO THE MEMORY OF A POOR LUNATIC. Chap. V. THE emigrant's LARK. 53 CHAPTER V. THE EMIGRANT'S LARK. Henry Patterson and his wife Elizabeth sailed from tho Tower in the year 1834, as e^nigrants on board a vessel heavily laden with passengers, and bound to Quebec. Patterson was an intimate friend of a noted bird' catcher in London called "Charley Nash." Now Nash had determined to make his friend a present of a good skylark to take to Canada with him ; but not having what he called "a real good un" among his collection, he went into the country on purpose to trap one. In this effort he succeeded, but when he returned to London he found his friend Patterson had embarked, and that the vessel had sailed a few hours befoi he reached the Tower Stairs. He therefore jumped on board a steamer, and, over- taking the ship just as she reached Gravesend, he hired a small boat, and then, sculling alongside, he was soon recognised by Patterson and his wife, who with a crowd of other male and female emigrants, of all ages, we e taking a last farewell of the various objects which the vessel was slowly passing. "Here's a bird for you, Harry," said Nash to Patterson, as standing up in the skiff he took the 64 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. J> frightened captive out of his hat, " and if it sings as well in a cage as it did just now in the air, it will be the best you have ever heard.'* Patterson, descending a few steps from the gang- way, stretched out his hand and received the bird, which he inunediately called " Charley " in remem- brance of his faithful friend Nash. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence the vessel was wrecked; almost everything was lost except the lives of the crew and passengers ; and accordingly when Patterson, with his wife hanging heavily on his arm, landed in Canada, he was destitute of every- thing he had owned on board excepting Charley, whom he had preserved and afterwards kept for three days in the foot of an old stocking. After some few sorrows, and after some little time, Patterson settled himself at Toronto, in the lower part of a small house in King Street, the prin- cipal thoroughfare of the town, where he worked as a shoemaker. His shop had a southern aspect ; he drove a nail into the outside of his window, and re- gularly every morning, just before he sat upon his stool to commence his daily work, he carefully hung upon this nail a common skylark's cage, which had a solid back of dark wood, with a bow or small wire orchestra in front, upon the bottom of which there was to be seen, whenever it could be procured, a fresh sod of green turf. As Charley's wings were of no use to him in this prison, the only wholesome exercise he could take was by hopping on and off his little stage ; and this Chap. V. THE EMIGRANT S LARK. 55 sometimes he would continue to do most cheerfully for hours, stopping only occasionally to dip his bill into a small square tin box of water suspended on one side, and then to raise it for a second or two towards the sky. As soon, however, as (and only when) his spirit moved him, this feathered captive again hopped upon his stage, and there, standing on a bit of British soil, with his little neck extended, his small head slightly turned, his drooping wings gently fluttering, his bright black eyes intently fixed upon the distant deep, dark-blue Canada sky,, he commenced his unpremeditated morning song, his extempore matin prayer ! The effect of his thrilling notes, of his shrill, joyous song, of his pure, unadulterated English voice upon the people of Canada, cannot be described, and probably can only be imagined by those who either by adversity have been prematurely weaned from their mother country, or who, from long-continued absence from it, and from hope deferred, have learned in a foreign land to appreciate the inestim- able blessings of their father-land, of their parent home. All sorts of men, riding, driving, walking, propelled by urgent business, or sauntering for ap- petite or amusement, as if by word of command, stopped spell-bound to listen, for more or less time, to the inspired warbling, to the jo^-^M hallelujahs of a common homely-dressed English lark ! The loyal listened to him with the veneration with which they would have listened to the voice of their Sovereign ; reformers, as they leaned towards him, heard nothing 56 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. y. in his enchanting melody which even the^ could desire to improve. I believe that in the hearts of the most obdurate radicals he reanimated feelings of youthful attachment to their mother country ; and that even the trading Yankee, in whose country birds of the most gorgeous plumage snuffle rather than sing, must have acknowledged that the heaven- born talent of this little bird unaccountably warmed the Anglo-Saxon blood that flowed in his veins. Indeed, I must own, that although I always refrained froija joining Charley's motley audience, yet, while he was singing, I never rode by him without ac- knowledging, as he stood with his outstretched neck looking to heaven, that he was (at all events, for his size) the most powerful advocate of Church and State in Her Majesty's dominions; and that his eloquence was as strongly appreciated by others, Patterson received many convincing proofs. Three times as he sat beneath the cage, proud as Lucifer, yet hammering away at a shoe-sole lying in purgatory on his lap-stone, and then, with a waxed thread in each hand, suddenly extending his elbows, like a scaramouch ; three times was he in- terrupted in his work by people who each separately offered him one hundred dollars for his lark : an old farmer repeatedly offered him a hundred acres of land for him ; and a poor Sussex carter, who had imprudently stopped to hear him sing, was so com- pletely overwhelmed with affection and maladie du fays, that, walking into the shop, he offered for him all that he possessed in the world .... his horse Chap. V. THE EMIGRANT S LARK, 57 and cart; but Patterson would sell him to no one. On the evening of the — th of October, 1837, the shutters of Patterson's ^hop-windows were half closed, on account of his having that morning been accidentally shot dead on the island opposite the city. The widow's prospects were thus suddenly ruined, her hopes blasted, her goods sold, and I need hardly say that I made myself the owner — the lord and the master — of poor Patterson's lark. It was my earnest desire, if possible, to better his condition, and I certainly felt very proud to possess him ; but somehow or other this " Charley-is-my- darling" sort of feeling evidently was not reciprocal. Whether it was that in the conservatory of Grovem- ment House at Toronto Charley missed the sky, — whether it was that he disliked the movement, or rather want of movement, in my elbows, — or whe- ther from some mysterious feelings, some strange fancy or misgiving, the chamber of his little mind was hung with black, I can only say that during the three months he remained in my service I could never induce him to open his mouth, and that up to the last hour of my departure he would never sing to me. On leaving Canada I gave h^ to Daniel Orris, an honest, faithful, loyal friend, who had accom- panied me to the province. His station in life was about equal to that of poor Patterson ; and accord- ingly, so soon as the bird was hung by him on the 58 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. V.' outside of his humble dwelling, he began to sing again as exquisitely as ever. He continued to do 80 all through Sir George Arthur's administration. He sang all the time Lord Durham was at work,— he sang after the Legislative Council, — the Execu-^^ tive Council, — the House of Assembly of the pro- vince had ceased for ever to exist, — he sang all the while the Imperial Parliament were framing and agreeing to an Act by which even the name of Upper Canada was to cease to exist, — he sang all the while Lords John Kussell and Sydenham were arranging, eflPecting, and perpetuating upon the United Provinces of Canada the baneful domination of what they called " responsible government ;" and then, feeling that the voice of an English lark could no longer be of any service to that noble portion of Her Majesty's dominions — ^he died I Orris sent me his skin, his skull, and his legs. I took them to the very best artist in London — the gentleman who stuffs for the British Museum — who told me to my great joy that these remains were perfectly uninjured. After listening with great pro- fessional interest to the case, he promised me that he would exert his utmost talent ; and in about a month Charley returned to me with unruffled plu- mage, standing again on the little orchestra of his cage, with his mouth open, looking upwards — in short, in the attitude of singing, just as I have de- scribed him. I have had the whole covered with a large glass Chap. V. THE EMIGRANT'S LARK. 59 case, and upon the dark wooden back of the cage there is pasted a piece of white paper, upon wliich I have written the following words : — THIS LARK, TAKEN TO CANADA BY A POOB EMIGRANT, WAS SHIPWRECKED IN THE ST. LAWRENCE, AND, AFTER SINGING AT TORONTO FOB .TINE YEARS, DIED THERE ON THE 14tH OF MARCH, 1843, UNIVERSALLY REGRETTED. Home 1 Home I Sweet Home I 60 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VI. CHAPTER VI. THE LONG TROT. When an engineer has to construct, in a foreign country, a work of magnitude upon which his repu- tation must stand or fall, his first object should be, by repeated trials, to ascertain the quality of the timber, iron, stone, lime, cement, and other materials of which his work is to be composed. The same precaution is evidently necessary in the administration of the government of an important colony ; and accordingly my principal endeavour during the time I was in Canada was to make my- self acquainted with the antagonist opinions, dis- senting sects, and conflicting interests, as represented by the conglomerated population of the Province. As my despatches were almost invariably written at night, for upwards of two years I was principally occupied in receiving for six days in the week, from ten in the morning till three or four o'clock in the afternoon, whoever might desire to see me ; and as everybody had either some little grievance to com- plain of, some little favour to ask, or some slight curiosity to become acquainted with me, — in short, some small excuse for a holiday-trip to Toronto, my waiting-room was almost constantly supplied with a Chap. VI. THE LONG TROT. 61 round-robin list of attendants, to which there was apparently no end. I need hardly say that I had some endless, object- less, miserably-unimportant, and consequently most wearisome stories to listen to ; and that the bulk of the business, if such it could be termed, would have been infinitely better transacted by written memo- rials, to be carefully examined and reported on, by the various departments to which each respectively belonged. On the other hand, though I was often much fatigued by giving attention to such a variety of minute statements, many of which had neither head nor tail, and which were quite as confusedly under- stood by the various explainants as they were by me ; yet I always felt it to be of infinite service to me thus to lear- 1 from their own mouths whatever the inhabitants of the Province might have to complain of; and that a little patience, a few sentences of ex- planation, and a few words of kindness, were seeds well worth the trouble of sowing. But although by this dull routine I became per- sonally acquainted with most of those who could afford the enjoyment of a journey to Toronto, yet there were, of course, many emigrants in the remote districts whose purses and whose occupations tethered them to their locations. From some of these I was in the habit of receiving letters on all sorts of sub- jects ; and although it was occasionally not a very easy task to decipher them, it was very gratifving to me, after a careful analysis of their contents, to ascertain what very trifli' g grounds of complaint 62 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. Vi; they contained: indeed, I believe that in many- cases the grievance was not half equal to the trouble of describing it. Some evidently did not know in what form to begin or end their epistle ; and some, who had managed to ascertain this, had really no- thing to put in the middle of it. In short, I was addressed in all sorts of ways, and with all sorts of requests ; as a sample of which I will insert the fol- lowing very reasonable letter which I received from an old soldier of the 49th : — " 29th March, 1837. "May it plase your Honor and glory, for iver more, Amen! " I, James Ketsoe, Formly belonging to the 49 Regt. of Foot, was sent to this contry in 1817 by his Majesty Gorge the Forth to git land for myself and boys ; but my boys was to small, but Plase your Honor now the Can work, so I hope your honor wold be so good to a low them Land, be- cause the are Intitle to land by Lord Bathus. I was spak- ing to His Lord Ship in his one office in Downing Street, London, and he tould to beshure I wold Git land for my boys. Plase your Honor, I was spaking to Lord Almor before he went home about the land for my boys, and he 'sed to beshure I was Intitle to it. *' Lord Almor was Captain in the one Regt., that is, the Old 49th Regt. foot. Plase your Honor, I hope you will doe a old Solder Justis. God bless you and your family. " Your most humble Sarvint, *' James Ketsoe. " N.B. — Plase your Honor, I hope you will excuse my Vulgar way of writing to you, but these is hard times, Governor, so I hope you will send me an answer." Chap. VI. THE LONG TROT. 63 To these various applications I gave the clearest answers in my power ; but knowing that a visit to my malcontents would give much more satisfaction than any letters I could write to them, I resolved to inspect every district in the province, and ac- cordingly, during the two summers I was in Canada, I employed myself in this duty. The plan I pursued was, to give notice of the time and place at which I proposed to enter each district ; and accordingly, on my arrival, I generally found assembled, on horseback, people of all conditions, who, generally from good feelings, and occasionally from curiosity, had determined to accompany me through their respective townships. The pace I travelled at, from morning till five or six o'clock in the evening, was a quiet, steady, unre- lenting trot; and in this way I proceeded many hundred miles, listening sometimes to one descrip- tion of politics and sometimes to another — some- tiiiibo to an anecdote, and sometimes to a complaint — sometimes to a compliment, and sometimes, though very rarely, to observations evidently proceeding from a moral region " on the north side of friendly." I thus visited all the cities, towns, and largest vil- lages ; all the principal locations ; — the Eideau, St. Lawrence, and Welland canals ; all the public works, the macadamised roads, plank roads, corduroy roads, the great harbours, lighthouses, and the great rivers. I went down the rapids of the Trent in a bark canoe, — down the Ottawa water-slide on a raft, with the lumberers ; in fact, I traversed the wilderness of 64 THE EMIGRANT. Chap, vr; Canada in various directions, from the extreme east to the extreme west, and vi'jited Lakes Huron, Erie, Simcoe, and Ontario. But although the features of the country were highly interesting, the experience I valued most of all was the moral and political information I waa enabled to collect from the numerous persons who were good enough to ride along with me, and whom I always found as ready to instruct me as I was to learn ; in short, quite as willing to couch from my eyes the film of ignorance and prejudice as I was to submit — so far as it could rudely be done at a trot — to the operation. It would not only make a large volume, but an ex- ceedingly dull one, were I to describe in detail the various public works I inspected, the scenes I visited, or the facts and opinions I collected ; I will therefore briefly make but a few unconnected observations. Although every foreigner, the instant he lands in England, is struck with the evidence displayed be- fore him, in every direction, of the wealth and energy of the British people, yet a much more striking ex- emplification of both is to be seen by any one who will carefully survey a British colony. For instance, the growth of the colony of Upper Canada demonstrates beyond all doubt the extra- ordinary vigour of its parent state. Fifty yeai; ago, the region in question, which is considerably larger than England and Wales, and which is bounded by five or six of the largest Sta^tes of the adjoining republic, was a splendid wilderness Chap. VI. THE LONG TROT. 65 of deep rich soil, covered with trees- T>ine, beech, birch, cedar, and oak, of unusual girtn and height — under the branches of which there existed, almost hidden from the rays of the sun, the wild beasts of the forest, and their lords and masters, a few red Indians, who, with no fixed abodes, rambled through the trees as freely as the wind, which "goeth where itlisteth." In the hidden recesses of this vast wilderness, man and bea^'t, unseen by any living witness, were occa- sionally desperately engaged in single combat* The Indian sometimes was hungry — sometimes was gorged — sometimes, emerging from the wilderness, he stood for a moment gazing at the splendid inter- minable ocean of fresh water before him ; and then, diving again into the forest, he would traverse it for hundreds of miles in search of game, or of friends whose hunting-grounds, as well as innumerable other localities, were clearly traced on the tablet of his mind ; in short, he was acquainted with the best salt- licks, — ^he knew where to go for bears or for beavers, for fish, flesh, or fur, and he knew how to steer his course to commune with ** the Great Spirit " at that solemn place of worship, the falls of Niagara ; never- theless, with all his instinct and intelligence, the vast country he inhabited remained unaltered and even untouched, except by his foot as he rambled across it. Upon this strange scene of unadulterated, uncon- taminated nature, a solitary white man's face in- truded; and within the short, fleeting space of half 66 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VI. a century, what an extraordinary change has he effected I Upwards of half a million of his race are now busily cultivating the country, and in various other ways reaping the golden harvests of their industry. Cities and towns, composed of substantial brick or stone houses, and lighted with gas, have arisen, as it were by magic, from the ground. Magnificent har- bours have been fortified, valuable fisheries and timber trade established, and mines in operation. On macadamized roads upwards of 200,000?. has already been expended, as also an immense sum on plank roads. On inland navigation there has already been ex- pended — on the Rideau Canal, upwards of -a million sterling ; on the Welland Canal, nearly half a million ; on the St. Lawrence Canal, more than 300,000Z. ; on the Lachine Canal, about 100,000?. ; besides large sums on the Grand River Navigation, Tay Navigation, &c. Innumerable mills of various descriptions have been constructed. A legislature has been created ; and by its power and authority, and under the blessing of sound religious establishments of various denominations, the supremacy of the law has, throughout the whole Province, been enabled to guard life and property as efiectually as they are protected in England. Lastly, and in addition to the above, a million and a half sterling, the late loan from the mother-couiitry, either has been expended or at this moment is ex- Chap. VI. THE LONG TROT. 67 ex- pending on public works and improvements of various descriptions ; and when it is considei-ed that the region in question, in which, within the period stated, civilization has made more rapid strides than on any other portion of North America or of the habitable globe; is singularly gifted with a salubrious and exhilarating climate; that it is connected not only with a series of the noblest fresh-water seas on the surface of the world, but with the colonies of Lower Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward's Island, and Newfoundland, which comprehend harbours, collieries, and fisheries of the most valuable description; is it not astonishing to reflect that there should exist British Statesmen, both Whigs and Tories, of great moral worth, who are disposed to argue that our North American colonies, the nursery for our seamen, the employers of our shipping, the brightest jewel in the British Crown, are of no use 1 Why, even if the cities, towns, villages, houses, farms, cleared land, fisheries, lumber-slides, mines, collieries, liarbours, mills, lighthouses, canals, mac- adamized roads, fortifications, and various other public works and buildings which might be enumer- ated, were to be sold by public auction, the sum that all this British property would fetch in the market, enormous as it would be, would bear but little pro- portion to its real intrinsic value, inasnmch as in all new countries the value of every possession hourly increases with the swelling growth of the whole country : by which I mean, that while A is working I- 2 68 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VI. with his axe in the wilderness, his location and his log-hut are improved in value by every neighbour- ing clearance, by the establishment of every adjoin- ing mill; in fact, by eve^y road, canal, village, town, city, or market of any description, constructed in any part of the country. But besides the present marketable value of our North American colonies, it is surely of inestimable importance, not only to Great Britain, but to the whole family of mankiad, that the immense surplus population of our empire, instead of being every day cast adrift, as an infant is deserted by an unnatural mother — instead of being left without education, yeligious, moral, or political, to the commission of every possible crime, and thus to bring " sorrow, and sin, and shame" upon the English name, — should be parently conducted by the mother-coimtry to a fertile, healthy, and happy country, inhabited by colonists who glory in the name of Britain,—^ whose virtues and- whose bravery do honour to Old England, and who, with open arms, receive all those whose labour in the mother-country is a dr\ig, but in the young country an assistance of inestimable value. In riding through the forest I often passed deserted log-huts, standing in the middle of what is called " cleared land," — that is to say, the enormous pine- trees of the surrounding forest had been chopped down to stumps about a yard high, around wh^ch there had rushed up a luxurious growth of hard Chap. VI. THE LONG TROt. 69 n, 1 of e- cii brushwood, the height of which denoted that several years must have elapsed since the te*iants had retired. There was something, which I always felt to be deeply affecting in passing these little monuments of the failure of human expectations — of the blight of human hopes ! The courage that had been evinced in settling in the heart of the wilderness, and the amount of labour that had been expended in cutting down so many large trees, had all ended in disappointment, and occasionally in sorrows of the severest description. The arm that had wielded the axe had perhaps be- come gradually enervated by ague (which always ungrately rises out of cleared ground), until death had slowly terminated the existence of the poor emigrant, leaving a broken-hearted woman and a helpless family with nothing to look to for support but the clear bright blue heavens above them. In many of the spots I passed, I ascertained that these dispensations of Providence had been as sudden as they were awful. The emigrant had arisen in robust health — sm*rounded by his numerous and happy family, had partaken of a homely breakfast — had left his log-hut with a firm step, and with manly pride had again resumed his attack upon the wilder- ness, through wliich every blow of his axe, like the tick of a clock, recorded the steady progress of the hand that belonged to it. But at the hour of dinner he did not return I The wife waited — bid her rosy-faced children be patient — 'Waited — felt anxious — alarmed 70 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VI. —stepped beyond the threshold of her log-hut — listened : the axe was not at work I Excepting that indescribable aeolian murmur which the air makes in passing through the stems and branches of the forest, not a sound was to be heard. Her heart misgives her; she walks — runs towards the spot where she knew her husband to have been at work. She finds him, without his jacket or neckcloth, lying, with extended arms, on his back, cold, and crushed to death by the last tree he had felled, which in falling, jumping from its stump, had knocked him down, and which is now resting with its whole weight upon his bared breast ! The widow screams in vain; she endeavours to extricate her husband*s corpse, but it is utterly im- practicable. She leaves it to satisfy her infant's hunger — to appease her children's cries ! The above is but a faint outline of a scene that has so repeatedly occurred in the wilderness of America — that it is usually summed up in the words, " He was hilled by the fall of a tree." In riding through the midland district I passed a log-hut which stood about one hundred yards from the road, in the centre of a clearance of about four acres. As it had evidently been deserted many years, I inquired, as usual, of the person belonging to the township, who happened to be riding nearest to riie, to whom it belonged? in reply I received the fol; Chap. VI. THE LONG TROT. 71 lowing little story, which has since very often flitted across my mind. The British emigrant who had reared this humble shanty was one day engaged in a remote part of his two-hundred-acre lot in ploughing a small space of ground he had but partially cleared, and he was proceeding without his coat close to his plough, driving a yoke of oxen, when the aaimals, starting at some wild beast or other object they saw in the forest, suddenly dragged the plough between an immense fallen tree and a stump, by which the driver's right foot and ankle were so firmly jammed, that the plough was not only completely stopped, but immoveably fixed. ' For a considerable time the poor fellow, standing with his left leg on his plough, suffered excruciating agony, from which he saw not the slightest chance of release. At times he almost fainted ; but on re- covering from his miserable dreams he always found himself in the same position — in the same agony — in the same writhing attitude of despair. In a fit of desperation he drew his knife from his belt, and for a few seconds meditated on endeavour- ing to release himself by cutting off his own foot ; but reflection again plunged him into despair, and in this agony he remained until he bethought him- self of the following plan. Stooping forwards, he cut the band that connected his oxen to the plough. As soon as they were at liberty, he drew the patient animals towards him by the rope-reins he had continued to hold, and when ■f : I' 72 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. Vi: their heads were close to him he passed his hands down his naked arms, which for some time had been bleeding from the flies that had been assailing them, and then, daubing the points of the horns of both hia bullocks with his blood, he cut their reins short off, and striking the animals with their reins, they im-r mediately left him, and, just as he had intended that they should, they proceeded homewards. On their arrival at his log-hut, the blood on their horns instantly attracted the attention of a labourer who lived with him, and who, fancying that the animals must have gored their master, hastened to the clearance, where he found him, like Milo fixed in the cleft oak, in the dreadful predicament I have described, and from which it was with the utmost difficulty that he could be released. ' I cannot accurately recollect whether or not the poor fellow suffered amputation; but hia deserted log-hut, as I trotted by it, bore melancholy evidence that he had been unable to continue to labour as a backwoodsman, and accordingly that he had de- serted it. The Rideau Canal, which by a channel of 154 miles connects the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario with the Ottawa River, is not only, without any, exception, the most permanent as well as the best constructed work on either contiaent of America, but it is of incalculable military importance, ioas- much as it secures a communication between the Great Lakes and Upper Canada with Montreal and Clmp. VI. THE LONG TROT. 73 Quebec, in case the frontier road, that of the St. Lawrence River, should fall into the hands of the tepublican territory which adjoins it. In taking the levels for the construction of this vast work it appeared that there were two modes in which it could be executed : — 1st. By deep cuttings and embankments to retain the water within the usual limits of a canal; and, 2nd. By constructing locks at more advantageous levels, and then, by flooding considerable portions of land between them, to form a series of artificial lakes, instead of a narrow channel. The latter course, after very mature consideration, was adopted ; and although its advantages may be undeniable, it has produced a very appalling and unusual picture. The flooding of the wilderness was a sentence of death to every tree whose roots remained covered with water; and yet no sooner was this operation efiected than Nature appeared determined to repair the injury by converting the fluid which had created the devastation into a verdant prairie ; and accord- ingly from the hidden soil beneath there arose to the surface of these artificial lakes a thin green scum, which gradually thickened, until the whole surface assumed the appearance I have described. But this vegetable matter, beautiful as it appears, mixed with the gradual decay of the dead trees, becomes rank poison to human life ; so much so, that by native-born Canadians, as well as by emi- 74 THE EMIGRANT. \ Chap. VI. grants, -it is invariably designated by the horrid appellation of ''fever and ague." As I proceeded in a steamer through this trea- cherous mass, which, rolling in thick folds before the prow of the vessel, again closed in at its stem, the view was desolate beyond description. As far as I could see, in all directions, I was sur* rounded by dead, leafless trees, whose pale, livid, "uu wholesome-looking bark gave them the appearance of so many corpses ; and as the wind whistled and moaned through the net-work of their stiff, stark, sapless branches, I could not help feeling it was wafting with it, in the form of miasma. Nature's punishment for the wholesale murder that had been committed ; in short, I felt that as a single tree may ^tand in the middle of a deserted battle-plain, sur- rounded by countless groups of mutilated human corpses, so I stood on the deck of the steamer, almost a solitary witness of the melancholy picture of a dead forest; or, as in Canada it is usually termed, of " diowned land." In juctice, however, to the deceased distinguished ojfficer who constructed this work, it is proper to say, that on my inspection of the Welland Canal I beheld a similar scene ; and that for practical reasons, which it would be tedious to detail, the system of flooding land for canals is often adopted on the Continent of North America. As I was journeying towards tlie banks of the Ottawa, I trotted some miles out of my way to visit s Chap. Vr. THE LONG TROT. 75 a lone shanty, which nearly thirty years ago wit- nessed the death of an English nobleman under cir- cumstances of unexampled fortitude, which have often been repeated to me, and of which I believe the following to be an accurate account. In the latter end of August, 1819, the Duke of Kichmond, who was then Governor-General of the Canadas, after visitiYig Niagara and other parts of the upper province, reached Kingston on his return to Quebec. * . He had pre-arranged to inspect a new set of recently settled townships ; that is to say, blocks of the wilderness which had been designated on the map as such, on the line of the Eideau Canal, be- tween the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa. The expedition was to occupy three or four days. On the morning of the first day, as the duke, ac- companied by his staff, was rumbling through the forest in a light waggon of the country, he observed that he felt unwell, complained of a pain in his shoulder, and mentioned to the officers who were with him that he had had great difficulty in drink- . ing some hot wine and water that had been recom- mended to him. On the evening of this day he called the attention of a trusty servant who had been accompanying him to an luifinished letter he had addret ed to a member of his family at Quebec, and which the man was to deliver when they all arrived there ! The next day he became so much worse, that some of his staff would fain have per laaed him to ''■'■i 76 THE EMIGRANT. \ Chap. VI. m> relinquisli his expedition, and make for the St. Law- rence as the easier route to Quebec. He, however, determined to continue his inspection according to his appointments. On the following daj he was evidently extremely unwell, and he so far consented to alter his plan, that he stopped short of the village he had intended to reach, in consequence of there being a swamp through which he would have had to walk. Colonel , therefore, went forward to make preparations for the next day, and the duke re- mained all night at a cottage. Colonel saw how ill he was, and earnestly advised him to stop ; but the duke, feeling imwilling to disappoint those who were to meet him, persisted in proceeding. On the following morning he crossed the swamp ; and it was observed that whenevei the water was disturbed he was very much , agitated, and occa- sionally jumped upwards. On reaching the settle- ment he was met by Colonel , who was struck with his altered looks and manner, and begged him to endeavour to obtain some rest ; but he turned the subject by saying he should like to walk round the village, and he accordingly proceeded to do so. In the course of their walk they reached a small stream which crossed the road, on which the duke turned suddenly, and said to Colonel , tliat though he had never been nervous, his feelings were then such that he could not cross it if his life de- pended on it. Nevertheless, though so ill, and Chap. VI. THE LONG TROT. 77 though he was pressed to remain quiet, he persisted in desiring that he should not disappoint the chief officers of the settlement from dining with him, and begged they might be asked as usual. To one of his party he calmly remarked, ** You know, , I am in general not afraid of a glass of wine, yet you will see with what difficulty I shall drink it." During dinner the duke asked this officer to take wine with him, and it was evident that from some unaccountable reason it required the utmost resolution and effi)rt on his part to bring the glass to his lips. The party retired early, but as the duke, in con- sequence of certain feelings during the preceding night, expressed a great horror and disinclination to go to bed, it was not till late +hat he did so. Early the next morning .^e was found calmly finishing his letter to a member of his family, which he sealed, and then delivered to Colonel ■ , with a desire that it might be delivered at Mont- real, a request at the time utterly incomprehensible. Colonel , on receiving this letter, naturally enough observed that they should all proceed there togetiier; on which the duke mildly but firmly observed, " It is n^ use deceiving you, I shall never go doivn there alive." Colonel , considering this to be delirium, entreated him to remain quiet, and to send for medical advice. The duke, however, persisted^in. going as far as he could, and inquired what arrange^ ments had been made for his proceeding to the III I 78 TlIE EMIGRANT. Chap. VI; \ Kideau Falls, where a birch canoe belonging to the North- West Company was waiting for him. In reply, he was informed that it was proposed he should go by himself in a small canoe down a little stream that meandered through the forest for some miles, after which he would have to ride and walk. The duke made some objection to the canoe, intimating tliat he did not believe he could get into it ; but he added, " If I fail you must force -me" Now all this was deemed by the officers of his suite to be the effect of over-excitement, fatigue, and the e::treme heat of the sun. However, after breakfast the duke's party, attended by all the principal in- habitants of the little settlement, walked down to this stream, where they found the canoe in waiting, manned by a couple of half Indians. After taking leave of the assembled party and attendants, the duke, with an evident effort, forced himself into the canoe, and he had scarcely sat down when the frail bark pushed off, and almost immediately afterwards was lost sight of in the dark forest. So remarkable however was the appearance and effort he had made in approaching and in seating liimself in the canoe, that a gentleman present im- mediately exclaimed, ^^ By Heavens! gentlemen, the Duke of Richmond has the hydrophobia ! " This appalling observation conveyed to the minds of %is devotedly attached attendants the first inti- mation or suspicion of the awful fact which they had so unconsciously witnessed; and then flashf'd ^nppmpp Chap. VI, THE LONG TROT. 79 upon them the various corroborating circumstances which for the few preceding days had been appear- ing to them unaccountable ; namely, the spasms he had suffered in drinking — his agitation in crossing the swamp — his inability to pass the stream, &c. The agony of mind of the officers of his staff at such overwhelming intelligence was indescribable ; and while the object of all their thoughts was threading his way down the stream, they proceeded along a new road that had lately been cut through the forest to the point at which the duke was to disembark. They had proceeded about a mile, bewildered as to what possible course they should pursue, when to their horror they saw the duke running with fearful energy across the path, and then dart onwards into the forest. They immediately ran after him, but he went so fast that it was some time before he could be overtaken, and when he was — lie was raving mad ! They secured him and held him down on a fallen tree for a considerable time. At last his conscious- ness returned, and the very first use he made of it was to desire that they would take no orders from him, and that he would do whatever they deter- mined from him. What to do was of course a difficult point to settle ; they at last resolved to return to the settle- ment, and accordingly in that direction they all proceeded on foot. Close to the settlement, they reached the little mm 80 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VI; \ stream which he had arrived at the previous day, and which he had told Colonel he could not cross. At this point the duke stopped short, and turning round said, that as the last request he should have to make, he begged they would not require him to cross that stream, as he felt he could not survive the effort. Under the difficult circumstances in which they were placed, they could not resist such an appeal, and they therfore turned back along the path which led into the forest, not knowing where to go, or on what plan to proceed. They at last arrived at the little shanty I have mentioned, and, it being the only place of refuge for many miles, his staff requested the duke to remain there. After looking at it for a short time, he said he would prefer to go into the bam rather than into the hovel, as he felt sure it was farther from water. His attendants, of course, immediately assented to his wish, and he then sprang over a high fence and walked in. He remained in that bam the whole day, occa- sionally perfectly collected, with intermissions of spasmodic paroxysms, which affected both mind and body. Towards evening he consented to be moved into the hut, and accordingly such a bed as could be got ready was speedily prepared. The officers in attendance anxiously watched over him throughout Chap. VI. THE LONG TROT. 81 the night, and he became so much more cahn that they suffered themselves to hope that he might recover. The duke, however, who, from many circum- stances which afterwards transpired, must, for several days, have been clearly sensible not only of the nature of his malady, but that he could not survive it, was now perfectly aware of his approach- ing end, and accordingly, after calmly observing to those around him that his greatest earthly conso- lation was that his title and name would be in- herited by a son of whose character he declared the highest opinion and confidence, expressing cahn re- signation to the will of God, and without a struggle, he died. His body was brought down in a canoe from the Rideau to Montreal, where his family, who had scarcely heard of his illness, had assembled to wel- come his return ; and was subsequently removed in a steamer to Quebec, where, after lying in state for some days, his remains were interred close to the Comfnunion-table in the cathedral of Quebec. Nothing could exceed the affliction, not only of those immediately about him, but of the inhabitants of both Canadas, by whom he was universally beloved. The bare facts of his illness, which I have pur- posely repeated as nearly as possible in the woi'ds in which I have often heard them detailed by those on whose hearts his name is indelibly recorded, form the simplest and best evidence that could be G 82 THE EMIGRANT. \ C%. VI. offered of the unexampled pover of the human mind to meet with firmness and submission the greatest calamity that can assail the human frame. As I remained for a few minutes on horseback If before the hovel which commemorates, on the con- tinent of North America, the well-known facts I have just related, I deeply felt, and have ever since been of opinion, that there -exists in the British peerage no name that is recollected in Canada by all parties with such affectionate regard as that noble Englishman and English nobleman, Charles Lennox, the late Duke of Eichmond. On my arrival at the Ottawa I received from a number of very intelligent persons much informa- tion I had been ignorant of respecting the lumber- trade, in which they were all very deeply engaged. I afterwards, for a considerable time, conversed with a gang of those fijie athletic fellows who, imder the appellation of " lumberers," transport annually im- mense quantities of valuable timber of all descrip- tions to the Ottawa, to be floated down that river for the markets of Europe, A little above the picturesque city of Bytown, which appears to overhang the river, there are steep rapids and falls, by which the passage of this timber was seriously delayed. To obviate this, some capi- talists constructed a very important work, by which the torrent was first retained, and then conducted over a long precipitous " slide " into the deep water m. Chap. VI. THE LONG TROT. sa beneath, along which it afterwards continued its uninterrupted course. Although the lumberers described to me with great eagerness the advantages of this work, I did not readil) understand them; they therefore pro- posed that I should see a raft of timber descend the slide ; and as one was approaching I got into a boat, and, rowing to the raft, I joined the two men who were conducting it, and my companions who had taken me to it then returned to the shore. The scenery on both sides of the Ottawa is strikingly picturesque, and, as the current hurried us along, the scene continually varied. On approaching the slide, one of my two comrades gave me a staff about eight feet long, armed at one end with a sharp spike; and I then took up my position between them at what may be termed the stern end of the raft, composed of eight or ten huge trees, firmly connected together. As soon as the raft reached the crest of the slide, its stem, as it proceeded, of course took leave of the water, and continued an independent horizontal course, until, its weight overbalancing the stem, the mass, by tilting downwards, adapted itself to the sur- face of the slide, and then with great velocity rushed with the stream to the water boiling and breaking beneath. During the descent, which was totally divested of all danger, I found that by sticking my staff into the timber I had no difficulty whatever in retaining my position ; and although the foremost end of the raft g2 84 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VI. disappeared in the deep water into which it had plunged; yet, like the head of a ship, it rose tri- umphantly above the breakers ; and it had scarcely recovered, when the raft rapidly glided under a bridge, from the summit of which it received three hearty cheers from my brother lumbermen, who had assembled there to see it pass. We had been riding for several hours, when^ as we were approaching the Rice Lake, we arrived about noon at the end of a long straggling village of Indians, on whose civilization much care and bene- volent attention had been bestowed. On this occasion I adopted the course I had pur- sued on reaching several other Indian settlements, namely, I requested our party to halt, and then, dis- mounting, I walked quietly by myself into every single habitation of the disjointed street, which ex- tended upwards of half a mile. By this means I managed to pay my red children a visit without being known to them, and conse- quently without in any way ruffling or rumpling the simple, placid habits of their life. I found few at home except women and children ; some of the former were dressing their children, a few were playing with them, and some were feeding the ravenous little things with spoons as large as a common saucer. Many of the huts were clean and tidy ; and, being kindly received in all, I was well enough disposed to take a favourable view of the condition of their in- Chap. VI. THE LONG TROT. 85 mates. There was, however, something ?n the com- plexion of most of the children who were playing round the doors that completely divested the picture of the sentiment with which 1 was desirous to adorn it. Whether eating rice had made all their faces white — what could have made so many of their eyes blue, or have caused their hair to curl, I felt it might be unneighbourly and ungrateful to inquire; and yet these little alterations, insignificant as many may deem them to be, created in my mind considerable disappointment; indeed, I felt it useless to bother myself by considering whether or not civilization is a blessing to the red Indian, if the process practically ends — as I regret to say it invariably does — by turn- ing him white ! After continuing my trot through the forest, dur- ing which I rode over a corduroy-bridge, so barely covered with loose poles that, as I crossed it, I could see the water of the torrent rushing beneath my horse's legs, I arrived early one fine morning at the head of the steep rapids of the Trent ; and, as I had had occasion to give considerable attention to one or two very expensive projects for improving the navi- gation of that valuable river, I made the necegsary arrangements for descending the declivity, in order that I might see what it really was. The broad portion of the river before me was covered by floating trees and masses of large timber, which lumberers, many miles above, had committed to its 'T IMAGE EVALUATION fEST TARGET (MT-3) v.- ^ /y O % Wj- A / 4,. :^ >:^^ i/.x 1.0 [f i^ IIM I.I 1.25 U III 1.6 Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. MS SO (716) 872-4503 ». ^ \S^ '^"S^ .^1^ w ;^ t^ ^ l\ 86 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VI. waters, and which, unattended by any one, were now on their journey to a distant market. This timber, in various groups, advancing some- times endways, and sometimes sideways, came slowly towards us, until it reached the narrow crest of the declivity, when, just as if the bugle had sounded the word ** canter !" away it started, to descend a crocked water-hill nine miles long. A couple of full-blooded Indians had brought on their shoulders to this spot a small bark-canoe, in which I had intended to have descended^as I had been strongly recommended, with no one but them- selves. An English boy, however, who was with me looked so wistfully and so sorrowfully, that, when the moment came, I could not perpetrate the cruelty of leaving him behind ; and I had scarcely nodded to him a reluctant assent when I found him seated in ecstasy by my side. For a short time the Indians held on by the bank, to give respectful precedence to some timber that was approaching; however, so soon as they saw a space of clear water sufficiently large, they let go ; the canoe slowly followed the stream, until, reaching the crest of the rapids, over it went, and I need hardly add, away we went, on a little journey with- out any exception the most interesting I have ever enjoyed. The declivity down which we were hurrying was apparently composed of large stones, some close to the surface, some two or three feet beneath it, ovei^ which the heavy mass of water flowed, rolled. \ p Chap. VI. THE LONG TROT. 87 and tumbled, excepting that occasionally, without apparent reason, it would in certain places stand still and boiL Every now and then I thought our band- box must have been smashed to atoms ; but the old shaggy-headed Indian standing at the prow with calm dexterity guided us between the stones, and then immediately with equal success avoided ** snags *' and " sawyers," the former of which, fixed by one end to the bottom, presented the ^her at us, as if determined to 3pit us. But, besides the little local difficulties belonging to the passage, we were often apparently on the very brink of engaging in a civil war with our fellow- travellers the floating timber. Occasionally these trees and rafts, as they were hurrying along before us, would strike against a rock, stop, stagger, and then, slowly reeling round, proceed, as if for a change, with their other ends foremost. During this very unpleasant operation our placid pilots steered dia- gonally, to delay and thus prevent the canoe dash- ing against them.' And yet we had not much time to dispose of, inasmuch as the timber behind us, like irregular cavalry, was rapidly and confusedly follow- ing our rear. However, although, to raw strangers like ourselves, the difficulties which preceded, fol- lowed, and environed us were apparently great, and really at times seemed to be almost insurr^ountable, yet the calm tranquil attitudes of the old mdian, as sometimes with a finger, and sometimes with an elbow, he would silently insti-uct his comrade in which direction to concur with him in steering, * 88 THE EMIGBANT. Chap. VI. clearly proved that he was as much the master and commander of his frail bark as an experienced railway driver is of his locomotive engine, or as the coachman of an English mail is of his cantering team. Nevertheless the interest of the voyage was beyond description ; and as every second created something new to look at, and as there was nothing at all to talk about,*in due time, without the utterance, from the moment we had started, of a single word, we reached still water ; and as soon as we disembarked found our horses on the bank ready and waiting for usL We had arrived very nearly at the eastern ex- tremity of Upper Canada, and had been trotting for some time through the forest, when, on reaching some cleared land, we observed in the road, at some little distance, assembled to receive us, a fine athletic body of men. The instant we reached them a bag- pipe gave us a hearLy welcome ; and in a few moments, very much to my satisfaction, I found my- self surrounded by the muscular frames and sinewy countenances of the Glengarry Highlanders. About fifty years ago Bishop ^.vl'Donell brought one thousand eight hundred men of that name to the settlement I had now reached ; and their religion, language, habits, and honour have continued there ever since, unaltered, unadulterated, and unsullied. Their loyalty has always been conspicuous; and I need hardly say with what reverence they remember Chap. VI. THE LONG TROT. 89 the distant land of their forefathers. In short, so far as I was competent to judge, there exists no dif- ference whatever between these people and their clansmen in the old country; and they certainly most strongly exemplify the old remark — " Coelura non animxun mutant qui trans mare cur runt." I received from these fine fellows not only a hearty welcome but every possible attention. During the time I remained in the settlement a Highlander guarded the door of the house at which I stopped ; and the piper, with no little pride, dur- ing the whole period continued marching up and down serenading me with various tunes, the soul- inspiring meaning of which he no doubt considered that I as fully understood as himself. As the inhabitants of the township of Glengarry speak nothing but Gaelic, there exists scarcely a stranger among them ; and as their names are all alike, they must, one would think, occasionally have some difficulty in designating each other; for in- stance, a cause was lately tried there in which not only the names of both plaintiff and defendant were M'Donell, but each had selected from the Canadian bar a counsel of that name ; the jury, twelve in number, were ah M*Donells or M'Donalds, and so were almost all the witnesses. The four members of Parliament for the county and town bear the same name : their sheriff is a M'Donell, so is their vicar- general, so are most of their priests, and so was their, late bishop. I 90 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VI. However, by whatever name they may be desig- nated, the Glengarry Highlanders in Upper Canada may well be proud of it. They are devotedly attached to British institu- tions ; and when I had afterwards occasion to send them to Lower Canada to assist Sir J. Colbome, they showed the rebels in that province very clearly that Highland blood is not to be trifled with: indeed, there was so much of Rob Roy in their dispositions that it is whispered of them, that though they went down infantry they came back cavalry ! I at last reached the eastern extremity of the pro- vince, from whence I returned by the St. Lawrence, and from Kirljl to me a detailed report of their notes, almost without comment. As soon as, by the advice of my council, I had declined to accede to the prayer of this petition. Mt. McKenzie felt that a great commotion might easily be produced ; and as a number of the best men in the province consented to be agitators in such a cause, the excitement extended ; and as the hour of rebellion in both provinces was evidently approach- ing, many, who might have judged better, joined in petitioning and in advising me, as a matter of "policy," to grant a reprieve. I again consulted the judges ; but with that calm integrity which has always dis- tinguished their leader, he merely repeated what he had written. The executive council, much to their credit, remained firm in the opinion they had ex- pressed ; and as the moment was one in which the smallest concession to clamour, the slightest depar- ture from sound principles, the most trifling attempt to conciliate opponents whom it was my duty to defy, probably would, and at all events might, have been productive of serious results, I declared, with feelings which I need not describe, that the sentence was irrevocable, and that the law was to take its course — as indeed it did — at Toronto. Mr. McKenzie immediately perceived that he had better make the execution of tliis young girl the moment of his outbreak. He accordingly made arrangements for concealing arms in the town, and lor an assemblage of all his deluded followers, who were to enter the city under the excuse of witnessing r >» ex- the Chap. Vni. THE FLARE-UP. 125 the execution. They were then to come to Govern- ment House to petition in her favour, " dispose " of me, save the girl, plunder the banks, seize the go- vernment muskets, &c. If Mr. McKenzie had, after concocting this plan, remained quiet, a number of verj fine fellows would no doubt, under the impulse of the moment, have felt themselves justified in rescuing a young woman from a horrid and ignominious death; and when once the authorities were overcome, considerable mischief might have ensued until the yeomen and farmers forming the militia had had time to ad- vance; but in the madness of his guilt he wanted method, and his conduct became so outrageous, that without being aware of his plot, I made arrange- ments for calling out at a moment's warning a por- tion of the militia. The instant this prospective order was issued, Mr. McKenzie clearly saw th? ^ although I could remain doing nothipg, he could not. He theretbre, in the following number of his newspaper, published a list of nineteen successful strikes for freedom which had taken place in the history of the world, and in very- plain language called upon his followers to follow these glorious examples. The Attorney-General, who, with calm unremit- ting attention, had been watching the eccentric movements of this contemptible demagogue, now came to me to report that Mr. McKenzie had at last crossed the line of demarcation, and that he was within the reach and power of British law. S'i 126 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VIII. i Instantly assembling my co\mcil, with theii ad- vice I directed the Attorney-General to lose not a moment in arresting Mr. McKenzie for high treason ; but he had all along understood his position as clearly as the legal adviser to the Crown, and accord- ingly, at the very instant I was ordering his apjpre- hersicn, he had fled from Toronto, had assembled his followers, and as a leader of a band of rebels, armed with loaded rifles and pikes, he was advancing to attack Toronto. About a mile from Toronto, on the edge of a lonely clifiP which overhangs the beautiful waters of Lake Ontario, there had been constructed many years ago a weak fort in which a regiment of the line had always been quartered. As soon as Mr. McKenzie commenced the agitation I have just described, I requested the officer of engineers of the district to strengthen this fort by every means in his power; and accordingly its earth-works were sur- rounded by a couple of lines of palisadoe?, the bar- racks were loop-holed, the magazine stockaded, and a company of Toronto militia were lodged in a corner of the barracks. Although, however, I made these preparations, and also took the necessary precautions for prevent- ing Government House* from being carried by sur- prise, I secretly resolved, that on the breaking out of the rebellion which had already commenced in Lower Canada, and which I was quite aware woiild sooner or later take place in the Upper Province, I >. VIII. Chap. VIII. THE FLARE-UP. 127 would take up my position in the market-place of Toronto, instead of retiring, as it was expected I would, to this fort. For although I was a com- mander without troops, I had served long enough in the corps of engineers to know — first, that there exists in warfare no more dangerous trap than a fortress too large for its garrison ; and secondly, that there is no hold against a rabble more impregnable than a substantial isolated building, well loop-holed, swarming alive with men, and containing, hidden within its portal of entrance — as the market-house of Toronto did contain — a couple of six-pounders with plenty of grape-shot, as also about four thou- sand stand of arms, with bayonets, belts, ball cart- ridges, &c. I submit to the opinion of any military man of experience, that such a position, within a couple of hundred yards of my own house,, was not only per-* fectly adequate to any attack I could possibly have to expect, but that it was infinitely better adapted for defence by the militia of Upper Canada than a circumvallation of low earth-works, situated nearly a mile from any human habitation, and immediately bounded on one side by the forest. Besides which, in the moral contest in which I was about to be engaged, I should have been out of my proper ele- ment in a military fort: for as my army — if I was to have any — ^were the people of Upper Canada, my proper position was, without metaphor, in the heart of their capital ; and I therefore submit, that if I had abandoned Toronto, I should have desertsd my post. 128 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VIII. I state these few explanatory details, because in Canada, as well as in England, many people very kindly disposed towards me, but unversed in the rudiments of war, have considered I was very nearly taken by surprise ; whereas, the truth is, that if Mr, McKenzie had conducted his gang within pistol-shot of the market-house, the whole of the surprise would have belonged to him. I had taken to bed a bad sick head-ache, and at midnight of the 4th of December, was fast asleep with it, when I was suddenly awakened by a person who informed me that Mr. McKenzie was conducting a large body of rebels upon Toronto, and that he was within two or three miles of the city. A few faithful friends kindly conducted my family to a place of safety, and eventually to a steamer floating in the harbour, and while they were pic- ceeding there, I walked along King Street to the position I had prepared in the market-house. The stars were shining bright as diamonds in the black canopy over my head. The air was intensely cold, and the snow-covered planks which formed the footpath of the city creaked as I trod upon them. The principal bell of the town was, naturally enough, in an agony of fear, and her shrill, ir- regular, monotonous little voice, strangely breaking the serene silence of night, was exclaiming to the utmost of its strength — " Murder I Murder ! Mur- der ! and much worse ! ! '* As soon as I reached the market-house I found ■■Mi VIII. Chap. VIII. THE FLARE-UP. 129 assembled there the armed guard of the town, and a body of trusty men, among whom were the five judges, a force quite sufficient to have repelled and punished any attack we were likely at that moment to expect. We, however, lost no time in unpacking cases of muskets and of ball cartridges, and in distributing them to those who kept joining our party. That, however, among us we had at least one whose zeal exceeded his discretion, I soon learned by a musket- ball, which, passing through the door of a small room in which I was consulting with Judge Jones, stuck in the wall close beside u£ , In a very short time we organized our little force, and as we had detached in advance piquets of observation, to prevent our being surprised, we lay down on the floor to sleep. About eight o'clock in the morning I inspected my followers in the square in which the market- house stands. We were, of course, a motley group, I had a short double-barrelled gun in. my belt, and another on my shoulder. The Chief Justice had about thirty rounds of ball-cartridge in his car touch, the rest of the party were equally well-armed, and the two six-pounders were comfortably filled with grape-shot. Still, however, our " family compact" was but a small one, and as Mr. McKenzie's forces were much exaggerated, as Rumour, with her usual positive- ness, of course dec^nred that rebels were flocking to him by hundreds from all directions, and as he 130 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. Vlil, had already committed murder, arson, and robbery to a considerable amount, it was evident to us all that a problem of serious importance to the civilized world was about to be solved. In one of my printed proclamations I had lately said — " The people of Upper Canada detest demo- cracy, revere their Constitutional CI 'Her, and are staunch in allegiance to their KingJ* Was the pub- lication of these words by me an empty bluster, or a substantial truth ? Again, in reply to the demand for " responsible government," I had stated that ** I had not the power to alter the Constitution of the province, and that^ if I had the power, I HAD NOT THE WILL." . Was that despotic declaration now to be revenged, or would the farmers and yeomen of the province rise en masse to maintain it ? The result of the late election, and of the observations I had been enabled to make in my tour through the province, had convinced me that the people of Upper Canada preferred the freedom of monarchy to the tyranny of democracy j but would they, in the depth of winter, leave their farms and families to substantiate tliis theory? Would they, unsolicited by me, risk their lives in its defence? I knew that they ought — I firmly believed that they would. If they did, the triumph of British institutions over the new-fangled demand for " responsible govern- ment " would be unanswerable. If they did not, I felt that the hour for the legitimate repudiation by the mother-country of her North American colonies would have arrived, and that, whatever penalty I Chap. VIII. THE FLARE-UP. 131 individually might have to pay, no man could rea- sonably condemn me for having maintained, on the soil of America, so long as I was able, and without concession, the supremacy of British institutions. Impressed with this latter opinion, I fancied that my mind was perfectly tranquil, and in this state I passed the day, occasionally enlivened by an alarm that the rebels were advancing upon us, which, of course, caused every barricadoed window to be sud- denly bristled with the muzzles of loaded muskets, " like quills upon the fretful porcupine.'* The sun set without our receiving succour, or any intimation of its approach. My confidence, however, on the people of Upper Canada still re- mained in the zenith, and I have now the pleasure to show that in that position it was not misplaced. At two o'clock in the afternoon, Sir Allan Mac- Nab received intelligence, at Hamilton, a consider- able town at the head of Lake Ontario, and situated about forty-five miles from Toronto, that I was in the market-place, invested by Mr. McKenzie and his band of rebels. He immediately mounted his horse, rode to the whaif, seized a steamer that was lying there, put a guard on board of her, despatched messengers in various directions to the Canadian farmers, yeomen, &c., in his neighbourhood, and at five o'clock sailed, with the vessel heavily laden with " the men of G-ore,^^ upwards of a thousand of whom had but lately spontaneously proceeded to Toronto to express to Sir John Colborne their abhorrence of a letter K 2 132 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. viir. published by a certain member of the British House of Commons, in which he had designated their glorious connexion with Great Britain as ^^the bane-- ful domination of the mother-country." In all parts of the provinces similar exertions Were made; and thus, without a moment's delay, whole companies, small detachments, straggling parties, and individuals, without waiting to congre- gate, had left their farms and families, and were converging in the dark through the forest, from all directions, upon the market-place of Toronto. Poor fellows ! they could not, however, compete with the power of steam, and, accordingly, the " men of Gore " first came to the goal for which all were striving. I was sitting by tallow-candle light in the large hall, surrounded by my comrades, when we sud- denly heard in the direction of the lake-shore a distant cheer. In a short time, two or three people rushing in at the door, told us that " a steamer full of the men of Gore had just arrived ! '* and almost at the same moment 1 had the pleasure of receiving this intelligence from their own leader, I have said that my mind had been tranquilly awaiting the solution of a great problem,- of the truth of which it had no doubt ; but my philosophy was fictitious, for I certainly have never in my life felt more deeply affected than I was when, seeing my most ardent hopes suddenly realized, I ofiered my hand to Sir Allan MacNab. I had, of course, reason to be gratified at the CL. Chap. VIII. THE FLARE-UP. 133 attachment of any one to the cause it was my duty to uphold ; but of all the individuals in the province whom I could most have desired to see combined with me in arms to defend it, was the very one who first came to the British standard — namely, the Speaker of the Commons' House of Assembly, the constitutional representative of the representatives of a free and loyal people ! The next morning regiments of tired farmers and leg-wearied yeomen flocked in from all directions. On their arrival, I, of course, went out and thanked them, and then told those who had no fowling- pieces that they should immediately receive muskets and ammunition. " If your Honour will hut give us arms," ex- claimed a voice from the ranks, in a broad Irish brogue, " the rebels will find legs 1 " We had now sufficient force to attack Mr. McKenzie and his gang, who had taken up their position in Montgomery's Tavern, a large building, flanked by outhouses, situated on the summit of Gallows Hill, about four miles from Toronto; and accordingly my council, who had opportunities of listening to various opinions, very strongly urged me to do so. Lower Canada, however, was in open rebellion ; and as success in the upper province would, of course, be productive of serious moral consequences upon the other, and vice versa, I de- termined that nothing should induce me to risk losing a game, the court-cards of which were evi- in dently in my hands. 134 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VIII. in .; However, on the morning of the 7th y/e had such an overwhelming force that there remained not the slightest reason for delay ; and accordingly, leaving a detachment to guard the market-house and protect the town, the remainder of our force which, during the period of delay, had been organised into com- panies, was assembled for the object they had so eagerly desired. As the attack of Montgomery's Tavern has already officially been described, I will only here mention a few trifling details, which, of course, could not be stated in a formal account. I was sitting on horseback, waiting to hear the 'officer commanding the assembled force order his men to advance, and was wondering why he did not do so, when one of the principal leaders rode up to me, and told me that the militia wished me to give them the word of command, which I accordingly did. As the companies were subdivided into sections which merely occupied the breadth of the macadam- ized road, our force had an imposing appearance, and we were scarcely out of the town when the rebels, from the top of the hill they were occupying, must have seen this mass of bright arms glittering n the sunshine. ' The enthusiasm and joy of this cohmm was be- yond all description. Any one who had met them would have fancied that they were all going to a wedding ; or rather, that eveiy one of them were walking to be married. To this universal grin. . VIII. Chap. VIII. THE FLARE-UP. 135 however, there was very properly contrasted the serious, thoughtfiil, care-worn countenances of the ministers of religion, of various persuasions, who accompanied us until we received a few shots from the dark forest which bounded a narrow strip of cultivated land on each side of the road. Many among them, and especially the bold dio- cesan of the Church of England, would willingly liave continued their course, but, with becoming dignity, they deemed it their duty to refrain ; and accordingly, giving us their blessing, which I trust no one more reverentially appreciated than myself, they one after another retired. " Our men are with thee^* said the respected minister of the Wesley an Methodists; " ike grayer % of our women attend thee I" Montgomery's Tavern was now but a mile before us t and the shots -from the forest on each side in- creasing, it was deemed advisable to let loose a strong party of skirmishers upon the rebels who were firing upon us. The word was no sooner given than I saw Judge Maclean, a high-minded Canadian Highlander, vault over the snake-fe^ce by my side ; but the men in both detachments did the* same: and the manner in which they rushed into the forest resembled the de- scriptions I have read of a pack of high-bred fox- hounds dashing into an English furae covert. We had hitherto listened to the firing of rifles ; but the honest deep-toned voices of the English musket clearly annoimced the superiority of that I 136 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VIII. noble weapon over the " little pea " instruirient thai was opposed to it, and which, gradually subsiding, very soon became silent. As soon as the head of the column arrived within musket-shot of Montgomery's Tavern, which was evidently occupied by Mr. McKenzie's principal force, it halted until our two guns could come up. The rebels fired, as if disposed to maintain the posi- tion; but as soon as a couple of round shot passed through this building, they were seen exuding fr^m the door like bees from the little hole of their hive, and then, in search of the honey of safety, flying in all directions into the deep welcome recesses of the forest. At this moment a man on horseback was observed trying to ride his horse into the door of the tavern. ^^ Shoot me that man!" exclaimed the officer in command, in a sharp eager tone of voice. A couple of our best shots advanced, took a cool deliberate aim, and were on the point of firing, when a voice from the ranks exclaimed " Don't fire ! It 's Judge Jones .'" and true enoiigh it was. This Canadian subject, followed by Alexander Macleod (afterwards tried in the United States for having, as was falsely alleged, taken part in the cap- ture of the Caroline), had managed to get a-head to the point I have described. The column now eagerly advanced ; but by the time it reached the tavern, which if it had been pro- perly defended would ha\?. given us some trouble, the Irishman's prophecy had been completely fulfilled ; VIII. Chap. VIII. THE FLARE -tJP. 137 that is to say, the rebels* legs had efiectually saved them from the ARMS of the loyal. The bubble had completely burst, and nothing re- mained to tell of its pas^ history but Mr. McKenzie's flag, — his bag, full of letters and papers advocating ** responsible government," and the heaps of dirty straw on which he and his gang had been sleeping. " Juvat ire, et Dorica castra, Desertosque videre locos, littusque relictum. Hie Dolopum manus I hie scevus tendebat Aehilles I" Shortly after the column had halted in front of this building, a party from the skirmishers brought me a couple of prisoners just captured in the bush. They had come from the interior of the province ; had been told all sorts of stories ; had been deluded rather than seduced ; Jind now they stood trembling, as if the only remaining problem in this world of any importance to them was, on which of the innume- rable tall trees aroimd us they should be hanged. Indeed I think I never before beheld two men so arrantly frighi^ined. They were all that remained of. Mr. McKenzie's army ; and as I had offered large sums for the ap- prehension of him and of all his leaders, I felt at the moment — rightly or wrongly, it is now too late to consider — that I could not celebrate our triumph more appropriately than by telling these two poor trembling beings, after half a dozen words of admo- nition, that " in their Sovereign's name I pardoned them." But the sentence came upon them so unex- pectedly, that although they were released they 138 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VI 11. \ t l:i could neither move nor speak ; indeed, they veiy nearly fainted away. It was, however, necessary that we should mark and record, by some act of stern vengeance, the important victory that had been achieved; and I therefore determined, that, in the presence of the assembled militia, I would bum to the ground Mont- gomery's Tavern, and also the house of Mr. Gibson, a member of the Provincial House of Assembly, who had commanded Mr. McKenzie's advanced guard, and who with him had just absconded to the United States. Mr. Montgomery had also been one of the prin- cipal ringleaders. His tavern had long been the rendezvous of the disaffected ; it had just been their fortress, from which they had fired upon Her Majesty's subjects ; but fax above all, its floor was stained with the blood— and its walls had witnessed the death of— Colonel Moodie. This gallant old soldier, who had highly distin- guished himself in the Peninsular war, was resid- ing three or fou^ miles up the road on which we stood ; and as soon as Mr. McKenzie's body of amed rebels had passed his house, he determined t^ 'oute qui eoute — he would ride through them, give me information that they were marching S.U Toronto. As he approached Montgomery's Tavern his fear- less pace clearly proclaimed his object. The rebels called upon him to pull up ; but proudly feeling that he was ** on Her Majesty's service," he professionally in. reiy Chap. VIII. TIIE FLARE-UP. 139 continued his course, until he fell to the ground, pierced by several shots from their rifles. On being carried into Montgomery's Tavern,* mortally wounded, he was treated with barbarous in- dignity. The rebels called him " a Bloody Tory 1" and the appellation was correct ; but he died as he had lived, an honest, brave, loyal subject of the Crown. His last words were, ** My God! my Queen! and my country !" I need hardly say that my order to brm the building in which Colonel Moodie had been thus treated was very cheerfully received ; and I was on horseback waiting the result, when about forty yards on my right I heard the voice of a woman surrounded by some of the militia, and who was evidently in an agony of despair. Fearing there might be a disposition tx) ill-treat her, I rode up to her. For some reason or other — probably, poor thing, because either her husband, or brother, or son, had just fled with the rebels — she was in a state of violent excitement ; and she was addressing herself to me, and I was looking her full in the face, and listening to her with the utmost desire, to understand, if pos • sible, what she was very incoherently complaining of, when all of a sudden she gave a piercing scream. I saw her mind break — her reason burst ; and no sooner were they thus relieved from the high pressure which had been giving her such excruciatiag plin than her countenance relaxed; then, beaming with frantic delight, her uplifted axms flew round her 140 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. VIII. head ; her feet jumped with joy ; and she thus re- mained dancing before me — a raving maniac I But volume after volume of deep black smoke rolling and rising from the windows of Montgomery's Tavern now attracted my attention. This great and lofty building, entirely constructed of timber and planks, was soon a mass of flames, whose long red tongues sometimes darted horizontally, as if revenge- fully to consume those who had created them, and tht- flared high above the roof. As we sat on our horses the heat was intense ; and while the conflagration was the subject of joy and triumph to the gallant spirits that immediately sur- rounded it, it was a lurid telegraph intimating to many an anxious and aching heart at Toronto the joyful intelligence that the yeomen and farmers of UpTjer Canada had triumphed over their perfidious enemy, ** responsible government." As mankind, in every region of the globe, are prone to exaggerate the importance of every little event in which they themselves happen to have been engaged, it would only be natural if I were to follow this course as regards the events I have just detailed. Figures, however, as well as facts, fortunately pre- vent me from doing so. The whole force which Mr. McKenzie and his; assistant, Dr. Eolph, a practising midwife, were enabled to collect amounted only to 500 men. i^ow at this moment the population of Upper Canada was 450,000 ; Toronto contained 10,000 j and the Home District 60,000. III. re- oke Chap. VIII. THE FLARE-UP. 141 On the fourth day after the outbreak, such num- bers of loyal men were flocking towards Toronto from all directions that I was obliged to publish pla- cards throughout the province, announcing I had no occasion for their services ; and on the seventh day ^.fcer the outbreak I issued a general order, placing (besides Her Majesty's troops, who had already departed) the militia of seven counties of Upper Canada at the disposal of Sir John Colborne for the defence of the Lower Province. I mention these facts to prove that the advocates oi ^^ responsible government" had phydcally been defeated as completely as their demand had, several months ago, been morally defeated throughout the Province at the hustings. 142 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. IXi CHAPTER IX. i^' I 11 3 >%i ».; THE BRITISH FLAG. On to^j arrival at Toronto, people from all parts of the Province, propelled by a variety of feelings they could not control, were seen centripedally riding, driving, or walking towards Government House. One, in pure English, described to me the astonishing liixuriance of the western district ; another, in a strong Irish brogue, the native beauty of Lake Simcoe ; another, in broad Scotch, explained to me the value of the timber trade on the Ottawa ; one confidently assured me that in his district there were veins of coal, — another hinted at indications of copper, — one raved about a fishery, — another was in raptures about the college, — some described to me Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario, — several the Falls of Niagara, — all praised the climate ; " and yet," said I to myself, as absorbed in deep melancholy I imperfectly listened to their descriptions in detail, *' and yet how is it that in the foreground of this splendid picture I can no where see the British Flag ? Except by its powerful influence, how can I, inexperienced and unsupported, expect to stand :. against the difficulties which are about to assail me ? Except by its eloquence, how can I advocate the Iix, >» 3? Chap. IX. THE BRITISH FLAG. 143 glorious institutions of our country ? Except under its blessing, how can I even hope to prosper ? An admiral might as well attempt to fight a ship with- out a pennant, or to go to sea in a ship without a bottom, as that I, with nothing to look up to, and nothing to die under, should vaicly undertake to govern Canada from a house with nothing on its roof to greet the winds of heaven but stacks of reeking chimneys." ]f^ building, I know quite well it is usual to com- mei^ce by laying what is vulgarly called the foun- dation stone ; however, under the feelings I have but faintly described, I determined that I would begin to build my political edifice from the top, and ac- cordingly in due time there appeared on the roof of Government House, first, half a dozen workmen mysteriously hammering away, as if at their own shins ; then, as if it had started up by magic, or like a mushroom had risen in the night, a tall straight staiF wearing a small foraging cap on its head appeared ; and lastly, an artillery-man, in his blue jacket and red cuffs, was seen, with extended arms, to haul up, hand over head, and to leave be- hind him, joyfully fluttering in the wind, the British Flag. What were my own feelings when 1 first beheld this guardian angel hovering over my head I had rather not divulge, but the sensation it . created throughout the Province I need not fear to describe. " There 's no mistaking what that means I" ex- claimed an old Canadian colonel of militia, wlic 144 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. IX, Chj happened to be standing, with a group of his com- rades, at the moment the artillery-man finished his job. *'Now what's the use of that, I should just like to know ?" muttered a well-known supporter of republican principles : however, the latter observa- tion was but an exception to the rule, for the truth is, that the sight of the British Flag extinguished rather than excited all narrow jealousies, all angry feelings, all party distinctions, all provincial animo- sities. Its glorious history rushed through the mind and memory to the heart of almost every one who beheld it. The Irish Catholic, the Orangeman, the Scotcn Presbyterian, the Methodist, the English reformer, the voters for ballot, for universal suffrage, for re- sponsible government, or, in other terms, for " no Governor," for liberty and equality, and for other theoretical nonsense they did not clearly understand, as if, by mutual consent, forgot their differences as they gazed together with fraternal affection upon what all alike claimed as their common property, their common wealth, their common parent; and, while as if rejoicing at the sight of its congregation, the hallowed emblem fluttered over their heads — it told them they were the children of one family — it admonished them to love one another — it bade them fear nothing but God, honour their sovereign, and obey their own laws. From sunrise till sunset this ** bit of bunting '* was constantly, as from a pulpit, addressing itself to the good feelings of all who beheld it, and especially to the members of both it IX. im- his ust of fva- Chap. IX. THE BRITISH FLAG. 145 branches of the legislature, who, in their way to, and return from. Parliament-buildings, had to walk almost underneath it twice a day during the session. In all weathers it was there to welcome all con- ditions of men ; sometimes in the burning heat of summer, it hung motionless against the staff, as if it had just fainted away from the dull, sultry mug- giness of the atmosphere ; at other times it was ^occasionally almost veiled by the white snow-storm, termed "poudre," drifting across it. Some one truly enough declared that " the harder it blew the" smaller it grew ;" for, as there were flags of several sizes, it was deemed prudent to select one suited to the force of the gale, until, during the hurricanes that occasionally occur, it was reduced from its smallest size to a "British Jack," scarcely bigger than a common pocket liandkerchief ; nevertheless, large or small, blow high or blow low, this faithful sentinel was always at his post. For many years the English, Irish, and Scotch inhabitants of Upper Canada had been in the habit, on the day of their respective patron saint, of meet- ing and (very prudently before dinner) of marching together arm-in-a^ n, hand-in-hand, or " shoulder to shoulder," in procession down King-street to Grovernment House, which forms the western extre- mity of that handsome thoroughfare of the city. These assemblages were naturally productive of glorious recollections, and of noble sentiments ; and, as I have already stated, that they allayed rather than excited all provincial disputes, it was highly 146 THE EmORANT. Chap. IX. ./ desirable to encourage them; and as for some time there had been carefully preserved in the govern- ment store an immense silk standard, sent from England, and which had hitherto been hoisted on a flag-staff' opposite Parliament-buildings on the open- ing of the Provincial Legislature, on the birth-day of the Sovereign, and on other State occasions, I directed that, on the three days alluded to, the artillerymen who had charge of the flag-staff* on, Government House should lower the ordinary flag so soon as the head of the procession, preceded by its band, made its appearance; and thenas.it ap- proached, haul up this great Imperial Standard. It would be difficult to describe to those who liave never been long from England, and quite un- necessary to explain ^to those who have, the feelings with which the followers of each of these three pro- cessions received the compliment, so justly due to the distinguished day on which they had respectively assembled. Every man as he marched towards the Imperial Standard, which he saw majestically rising in the sky to receive him, felt convinced that liis stature was increasing, that his chest was expanding, that the muscles of his legs were growing stronger, and that his foot was descending firmer and heavier to the ground. The musicians' lungs grew evidently stouter, the drummers' arms moved quicker; the national airs of * God save the Queen,* * St. Patrick's Day in the Morning,' and * Scots wha hae wi* AYal- lace bled,' resounded louder and louder ; and as the Chap. IX. THE BRITISH FLAG. 147 sacred object upon which every eye was fixed, in its ascension slowly floated and undvdated across the clear blue sky, it gradually revealed to view a glit- tering mass of* hieroglyphics, out of which every man ravenously selected those he conceived to be espe- cially his own. " What ANIMALS are those f** said a tall lean man through his nose, on St. George's Day, as he pointed to the congregation of Lions with fists clenched ready to box, and of Unicorns quite as eager to butt, that were waving over his head. "/« it animals you're spahing after?" sharply replied a young Irishman, who like the querist had been standing in the crowd, waiting to see the pro- cession of Englishmen arrive: "owe of thim ani- mals I till ye is the Irish Harp ; and so get out o' thatf ye Yankee, or I ^11 bate the sowl out o'yel" Now it so happened that by the time the last words were ejaculated, the young Irishman's white teeth had almost reached the middle-aged querist's throat ; and as they were evidently advancing, and as the surgical operation proposed stro^^gly resembled that of taking the kernel out of a nut, or an oyster out of its shell, the republican naturalist deemed it prudent instantly to decamp, or, as it is termed by his fellow-countrymen, to " absquantilate" A number of instances, more or less amusing, were mentioned to me, exemplifying the strong feelings of attachment to the mother country elicited by the parental presence of the British flag. A com- L 2 148 THE EMIGRAJ^T. Chap. IX. pliment, however, was paid to it by one of its most bitter enemies, which, as it forms part of an impor- tant subject, and elucidates a serious moral, I will venture to relate. On my return from Gallows Hill I rode through High-street to Government House, from which I had been absent three days. On entering the room which to me, as well as to my predecessors, had, by day and by night, been the scene of many an anxious hour, and in which I had been in the habit of transacting the whole of my public business, my first feeling was, naturally enough, one of humble gratitude to that Supreme Power which had given victory to our cause ; and I was in the pleasing enjoyment of reflections of this nature when one of my attendants entering the room, delivered me a card, and informed me that Mr. Bidwell was in the waiting-room, and that he appeared extremely desirous to see me. When I first arrived in the Province this Mr. Bidwell was Speaker of the Commons' House of Assembly, in which he commanded a republican majority. Without, however, repeating details which are now matters of history, I will briefly remind the reader, that after I had dissolved the House of Assembly, and had appealed to the people to assist me in resisting the principle of " responsible govern- ment" which Messrs, Bidwell, Baldwin, and Co., had endeavoured to force upon me, the former not only ceased to be Speaker, but he and almost every other member of his repubHcan majority lost their Chap. IX. THE BRITISH FLAG. 149 election, and were replaced by members firmly attached to British institutions. The insignificant gang of conspirators whose de- clamations had caused so much sensation in England, seeing they had irrecoverably lost all power in the legislature of Upper Canada, were induced by a secret influence which I shall shortly have occasion to expose, to endeavour to attain by force of arms that system of " responsible government " which by argument they had failed to obtain. In this conspiracy, as well as in the rebellion which had just been suppressed, Mr. Bidwell had been deeply implicated; and, indeed, up to the very moment of the outbreak he had been in com- munication with Dr. Eolph, Mr. McKenzie, and other leaders. Although, however, he had acted with extreme caution, and although, being what is commonly called " a man of peace," he had prudently refrained from taking arms, yet in consequence of the political part he had acted, and the sentiments he was known to entertain, a number of people in the United States, as well as in different parts of Upper and Lower Canada, had addressed to him letters which had arrived in such numbt , that on and from the moment of the rebellion, the Post-Office authorit'es deemed it their duty to seize them, and then to forward them to me unopened. As soon as Mr. Bidwell, on inquiring for his letters, ascertained this fact, as also that Mr. McKenzie had inscribed his name alone on the rebel flag which the \ 150 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. IX. militia liad just captured at Gallows Hill, he felt that his own caution was no longer of any avail to him, for that, by the incaution of others, he was no doubt already betrayed. His only hope had been that the rebels might succeed in massacring the loyal, and in thus depos- ing the power and authority of the Crown ; but so soon as he learnt that the former had not only been completely defeated, but that McKenzie, Dr. Rolph, and their other leaders, had absconded to the United States, Mr. Bidwell felt that his life, that his exist- ence, hung upon a thread. His obvious course was to fly to the United States; but the coast was already guarded ; besides, as he was no horseman, he had not courage to attempt to escape ; and yet his conscience told him that the liand of any loyal man might, in retributive justice, now be raised against him : and as he knew how ex- asperated the militia had been by the barbarous murder of the brave Colonel Moodie, he had reason not only to fear the vengeance of the Crown, but that any one of the militia-men he met might be- come his executioner ; in short, he knew not what to do, where to go, or how to hide himself. In this agony of mind his acquaintance with the magnanimity of British institutions, his knowledge of British law, British justice, and British mercy, admonished him to seek protection from the sove- reign authority he had betrayed — from the execu- tive power he had endeavoured to depose; and accordingly, with faltering steps, he walked towards ►.IX. Chap. IX,. THE BRITISH FLAG. 151 Government House ; and, entering the waiting- room, he there took refuge under the very British FLAG it had been the object of the whole of his poli- tical life to desecrate ! ^ On the day before the outbreak I had had the windows of the room in which I was sitting when I received Mr. Bid well's card, blocked up with rough timber, and loop-holed; and on his opening my door, which he had before so often entered, the instant this strange and unexpected arrangement caught his eyes, he remained at the threshold for some moments, and at last slowly advanced, until he stood close before me. He neither bowed to me nor spoke ; but fixing his eyes on the tied-up bundle of his sealed letters which I held in my hand, he stood for some time broken down in spirit, and over- whelmed with feelings to which it was evident he had not power to give utterance. As I had not sent for him I of course waited to hear what he desired to say ; but as he said nothing, and appeared to be speechless, I myself broke the solemn silence that prevailed by mildly saying to him, as I pointed with his letters to the loop-holed windows at my side, " Well, Mr. Bidwell, you see the state to which you have brought us !" He made no reply, and as it was impossible to help pitying the abject fallen position in which he stood, I very calmly pointed out to him the impropriety of the course he had pursued ; and then observing to him, what he well enough knew, that were I to open his letters his life would probably be in my hands, I 152 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. IX. reminded him of the mercy as well as the power of the British Crown ; and I ended by telling him that, as its humble representative, I would restore to him his letters unopened, if he would merely give me in writing a promise that he would leave the Queen's territory for ever. Mr. Bid well had concealed in his heart some good feelings, as well as many bad ones ; and as soon as • his fears were removed, the former prompted him to express himself in terms which I will not undertake to repeat. Suffice it, however, to say, that he retired to the waiting-room, wrote out the promise I had dictated, and, returning with it, I received it with one hand, and with the other, according to my promise, delivered to him the whole of his letters unopened. The sentence which Mr. Bidwell deliberately passed upon himself he faithfully executed. He instantly exiled himself from the Queen's dominions, and repairing to the State of New York, he very consistently took there the oath of allegiance to the United States, and openly and publicly ab- jured allegiance to all other authorities, and *' espe- cially to the Crown of Crreat Britain .'" In return, he instantly received all the honours it is in the power of Eepublicans to bestow ; and such was the feeling in his favour, that, contrary to cus- toni, precedent, and, I believe, contrary even to law, he was elected, by acclamation, a member of the American bar. The sequel of the story is an odd one. (/hap. IX. THE BRITISH FLAG. 153 At the very moment that Mr. Bidwell, with the barred light from my loop-holed windows shining on and shadowing his pallid countenance, was standing I fore me, tendering with the hand that wrote it his own sentence of condemnation, the Home Govern- ment were relieving me from the relative position in which I stood, because I had refused to promote this Mr. Bidwell to the bench over the heads of Archi- bald Maclean, Jonas Jones, Henry Sherwood, Sir Allan MacNab, and other Canadian-born members of the bar, who throughout their lives had distin- guished themselves in the field, as well as in the senate, by their attachment to the British throne. 1 had told the Queen's Government {vide my De- spatches printed by order of Her Majesty, and laid before Parliament) that Mr. Bidwell's *' object had been to separate Canada from the parent state, to create disafiection for the paternal Government of the King, and by forming an alliance with M. Papi- neau's party, to exchange the British constitution for the low grovelling principles of democracy ;" and " that for these reasons publicly to elevate Mr. Bidwell to the bench, would deprive me of the respect and confidence of the country." But the picture I here drew of Mr. Bidwell's principles and of the objects he had all his life had in view, was, I regret to say, attractive rather than re- pulsive, and, accordingly, in reply to my sketch, I was informed that Her Majesty's Government "could not regard the part which Mr. Bidwell formerly took in local politics as an insuperable barrier to his 154 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. IX, future advancement m his profession, and that, on the contrary, adverting to the general estimate of Mr. Bid well's qualifications for a seat on the bench, it appeared that the public service would be pro- moted by securing his service." I was therefore ordered, in case of another vacancy, to offer the ap- pointment to Mr. Bid well : this, rightly or wrongly, it now matters not, I refused to do : and thus, while Mr. Bid well, in consequence of having abjured his allegiance to the British Crown, was receiving in the United States compliments and congratulations on his appointment to the American bar, it appeared from the London Gazette that the Home Govern- ment had advised Her Majesty to relieve his oppo- nent from the administration of the government of Upper Canada ; in short, " The man recovered from the bite, The dog it was that died !" The above epitaph so graphically describes my decease, that I have not a word to add to it. Of my poor surviving flag-staff, however, 1 may be permitted to state, that it was deemed advisable to take the thing down, and, accordingly, with the help of half-a-dozen carpenters, down it came, never to rise again. Out of millions of acres of flag-staffs that were growing around it, not one was deemed worthy to exist on its site or in its immediate neighbourhood ! Wliat the radicals said, and what the loyal militia thought, when, instead of their revered " British Flag^^ they once again beheld nothing on the roof lap. IX. at, on te of ench, pro- efore lie ap- nglj, while id his n the IS on eared 'vern- 3ppo- :hap. IX. THE BRrnSH FLAG. 155 of Government House but the stacks of reeking chimneys I have described, it is now too late to in- quire. There is one feeling, however, in which all par- ties in Canada have agreed, namely, of utter asto- nishment that the great Conservative Party in the mother country has never once opened its lips in Parliament to demand a single word of explanation respecting the strange facts connected with Mr. Bidwell's proposed elevation the Bench, as de- tailed in despatches laid by command of the Queen before both Houses of the Imperial Parliament ! my 156 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. X. CHAPTEE X. THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. As soon as intelligence reached me that the American General, Van Eansalaer, and his forces, had taken forcible possession of Navy Island, I directed Sir Allan MacNab to march the Canada militia under his command to the Niagara frontier; and his re- ports of the reinforcements which were hourly arriving at Van Eansalaer's camp becoming at last alarming, by the advice of my council I proceeded to the Niagara frontier, to a point within a mile of Navy Island. • , Of the Falls of Niagara so m, ..j detailed descrip- tions have been printed that I shall only attempt of them a rough outline. It is well known that the magnificent reservoirs of fresh water which characterise the continent of North America are composed of a series of five lakes, or rather of inland seas, of different altitudes (their circumferences exceed four thousand miles) com- municating with each other by two short friths or narrow channels, the lowest of which, the Niagara river, by an inclination of three hundred and thirty feet, conducts the waters of Lakes Superior, Chap. X. THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 157 Michigan, Huron, and Erie, into Lake Ontario, whence they flow through the St. Lawrence to Quebec, and at last to the Atlantic, lying six hundred and twenty-seven feet below Lake Superior, and about two thousand miles from it. I had' ridden from the neighbourhood of Lake Erie to this river, where I found a fbur-oared boat ready to receive me, and accordingly stepping on board, propelled by the current and by my crew, I proceeded down the clear blue stream at a very rapid rate. Although it was in the depth of winter, the scenery around me was calmly beautiful. On the right, or American shore, were to be seen towns, villages, and habitations embedded in snow, and intermixed in about equal parts with the re- mains of the forest. On the left, or British side, there existed, here and there, a village, a fort, several thriving farms, and a narrow belt of cleared land, also milk white, occasionally dotted with stumps, and bounded by the dark-stemmed, white- topped wilderness. The difference between these two fraternal shores was only that of age. The right bank was the em- blem of youth, the left of infancy. Both had been partially cleared by the same parent — by the same race ; but the right shore was the elder brother, and had attained strength and age before the other was born, or, to drop metaphor, the American, or eastern shore, had been sufficiently cultivated, peopled, and 158 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. X, enriched by England to enable it to cast off its de- pendence at a period when the left shore was still remaining a portion of that vast wilderness well known in North America by the appellation of " the far West." As through a brilliant but intensely cold air we glided rapidly between these two shores, the per- pendicular banks of which (from four to eight feet high) were so near to us that we could easily have hailed people on either side, we passed Grand Island, which belongs to the Amer^-^ans; and then hurrying by a lovely wooded spot belonging to the British, called Navy Island, we suddenly, on rounding a point of land, saw from the very middle of the river before us, a mysterious-looking white mist, rising towards the dark blue sky which serenely reined above it. My heart felt sick the instant I beheld this mist ; and I am quite sure that if I had not known what it was, and had not listened to a strange voice of ad- monition which for some time I had observed to be rumbling through the air, I should have obeyed the instinctive feeling which, though I cannot describe it, earnestly warned me to ^* get ashore!" Indeed Nature has beneficently implanted this feeling in the hearts even of beasts, a curious instance of which occurred a few ^ears ago. Some people in the neighbourhood, who in their composition had rather more curiosity than mercy, subscribed a sum of money for the purpose of send- ing a vessel full of living animals over their watery Chap. X. THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 159 precipice into a watery grave. As soon, however, as ' IS unpiloted vessel reached the vicinity at which I had arrived, the sagacious bear, on seeing the mist, felt exactly what I felt, namely, that there was danger ahead, and accordingly he jumped over- board ; and diagonally hurried down by the current, with great difficulty he reached the little island flotirishing on the brink of the grave before him. The other animals made similar attempts, but in vain ; and thus, on the vessel reaching the cataract, the only living beings that remained on board, and who, therefore, must have been devoid of the in- stinctive feelings which had ejected the rest, were those who, having been gifted with wings, had no need of it, namely, geese ; but their brother biped, man, had cut their pinions ; and as they had no intuitive disposition to escape, and could not fly away, they met the doom which had so unkindly been prepared for them. Several were killed ; and although a few, by fluttering, preserved their lives, they were almost immediately killed for the sake of their feathers, which were sold to the human species as curiosities. , " Put me ashore, if you please,^^ I said to my pilot, as soon as I saw this mist; but the faithful fellow knew that, without any danger, he could carry me a little farther, and so, much against my will, I proceeded to a spot somewhat lower down, where, with very considerable alacrity, I landed on the shore, which was about six feet above the water; and the boat then veering round with her stern 160 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. X. towards the mist, was soon drawn high and dry on the beach. It was in the depth of winter, neai midnight, and pitch dark, when, following the footsteps of a trusty guide, I traversed the dry, crisp, deep snow, until I came to a few rugged steps which I could only very slowly descend. " A little this way ! " mut- tered my guide, as for some seconds I was lingering on a spot from which my other foot, afler fumbling in vain, could feel no landing-place at all. At last, after blundering for a short distance among trees, and over snow-covered obstacles of various shapes, I arrived on a flat surface, which I immediately felt to be glare ice, and along which, my conductor lead- ing me by his hard hand very slowly, we cautiously proceeded, until in a low voice he announced to me that I had reached the point to which I had directed him to conduct me — the table rock of Niagara. I could see nothing, and for that very reason I had come ; for in the various visits which at differ- ent seasons of the year I had made to this spot, I had felt so confused with what I saw and heard — my attention had been so distracted sometimes by one organ, and sometimes by another — sometimes by *^ Oh look!'* and sometimes by '^ Oh listen!"^- that I had resolved I would try and meet my enemies one at a time ; and even this I found to be almost more than my senses could endure. But although I could see nothing, yet I felt ^nd heard a great deal* Chap. X. THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 161 My first sensation was, that the " dreadful sound of waters in mine ears" was a substantial danger; that I was an actor in, and actually in the midst of what, as a passing stranger, I had come merely to contemplate. The cold thick vapour that arose from the cauldron immediately beneath me partaking of eddies in the atmosphere, created also by what was passing below, ascending and descending, rushed sometimes downwards upon me from behind as if it had determined to drive me into the abyss ; then it quietly enveloped me, as if its object were to freeze me to death ; then suddenly it would puff full in my face, and then whirl round rae as if to invite me to join in its eccentric dance. But while ray eyebrows, eyelashes and hair were heavily laden with this condensed vapour, that had rested upon them like flour on the head of a miller, from the same cause my attention was constantly arrested by loud crashes of falling ice from the boughs of the trees behind me, which thus occasion- ally ridded themselves of the enormous masses which, from the congelation of this vapour, were constantly settling upon them. Yet, although the sensations and noises I have de- scribed were quite sufficient to engross my attention, it was of course mainly attracted by the confused roar and boiling of the great cataracst, whose everlasting outline, though veiled by darkness, was immediately before me. For a considerable time I listened with the feel- ings of confusion I had so often before experienced ; M ■ 162 THE EMIGRANT. \ Chap. X, but as I became gradually accustomed to the cold wbirling vapour that surrounded me, as well as to the sudden crashing noises behind me, I felt myself by degrees enabled — at first imperfectly, and then dis- tinctly — to analyze and separate from each other the various notes of the two different instruments of which the roar of Niagara is composed — namely, the deep thundering tone of the fall of more than a hundred millions of tons of water per hour over a precipice of 150 feet; and the raging, hissing, lash- ing, and boiling of all this broken water in the con- fined cauldron beneath. The more I studied this language the more clearly I understood it, until, in the ever-changing but un- ceasing thunder of its eloquence I could always trace, in different proportions, and often apparently in dif- ferent places, the presence of these two voices in concert. ' > Sometimes the stunning, deafening noise proceed- ing from three thousand six hundred millions* of cubic feet per hour of an element of the same spe- cific gravity as oak, suddenly falling from 150 feet, would apparently so completely overpower every other, that I felt I could point in the dark precisely to the bottom of the cataract ; at other times no- thing beneath was heard but the raging of broken water, while the thunder that created it was resound- ing high over head, and sometimes apparently far away, as if a heavy battering-train of artillery were trotting through the forest over a paved road. * A ton of water contains thirty-six cubic feet. j^. Chap. X. THE FALLS OF NLA.GARA. 163 It was in the depth of the same winter that I again descena-d the same rugged steps, traversed the same ice, and once again stood, as nearly as possible, on the very same spot of the same table-rock. ,^ It was bright daylight. Behind me every tree, every rock, as well as the solitary cottage that en- livens them, were covered with a glittering coating of congealed ice, which was also reposing in heavy masses upon the depressed branches of the adjoining forest. The unusual brilliancy of this white scenery was deserving of great attention; but I neither dared, nor had I inclination, to look at it, because close to, and immediately before me, there stood, partially enveloped in the halo of its own glory, that great cataract, termed by the Indians — " 0-Nl- , AW-GA-RAH !" — " the thunder of water"' As soon as by the utterance of a deep sigh I had recovered from a vain attempt to repress the various emotions that overwhelmed me, on suddenly finding myself within a few feet of so many millions of tons of falling water — ^which have not unjustly been com- pared to an ocean thrown over a precipice — the first detail that attracted my eyes was the astonishing slowness with which the enormous mass was appa- rently deiscending into the milk-white ** hubble- bubble-toil-and-trouble " scene of confusion which was raging far beneath. About four-fifths of the water forming the cataract* before me was of a lovely clear deep green hue ; and as I earnestly gazed at it, it was beautiful to observe 164 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. X. in this semi-transparent fluid the opaque masses of ice which, first appearing on the crest, were easily traced descending leisurely in the fluid, in which, like the white patches in green marble, they were embedded. The remaining fifth part of the magnificent cur- tain before me was composed of muddy water from Chippewa Creek, which, running into the Niagara Eiver about a mile above, flows, without being per- mitted to mix with the pure stream, and thus falling with it over the precipice it forms a broad red border to the variegated mass I have described. About a mile above the cataract the ad\ancing volume of deep water which, imprisoned within the hordages of the Niagara Eiver, is cheerfiilly emi- grating from its native fresh inland seas to the distant salt ocean, receives its first check from some hidden rocks over which it falls about seventy feet in a series of splendid white breakers. The confusion is of course appalling ; but as delirium often leaves the human patient just before his death, so does this water previous to its gran^ fall completely recover its tranquil character, and thus for the last hundred yards it approaches its fate with that dignity, se- renity, and resignation which attend it to the very edge of the cataract, and which, as I have already stated, faithfully accompany it in its descent. * The sight, even for a moment, of this enormous mass of moving water is truly magnificent ; but when one reflects that the millions of tons of water per minute which are calmly passing down the X. Chap. X. THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 165 sses glassy cataract, for thousands of years have been falling, and, for aught we know, for thousands of years may continue to flow, by day and by night, over its crest : — the mind is illuminated rather than dazzled by the bright glimmering before it of that Almighty Power which, by evaporation, wind, and condensation, is eternally collecting from remote re- gicns of the globe this everlasting supply of water, to be transported to, and deposited in, those immense inland reservoirs, Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie. The scene, altogether, is one of the most impres- sive sermons that can be preached; and it is, I think, impossible for any one to stand on the edge of the table-rock of Niagara, sometimes completely enveloped in the dense cloud of white vapour, that in rolling volumes, pierced with prismatic colours, is rising from the foaming surges below; sometimes enraptured with the splendid pictures before, be- neath, and around him ; and sometimes deafened iilmost to distraction by the thundering, raging, and hissing noises which from all directions assail his ears, without feeling most deeply his abject depen- dence upon that Sacred Name which naturally rushes into the mind, and which by any one who suddenly beholds the cataract of " 0-ni-aw-ga-rah !" surely cannot be exclaimed — " m VAIN !" But however magnificent may be the Falls and scenery of Niagara, the moral picture before me was, to my mind, infinitely more attractive. Upon the British shore of the river, just above the .f. \ 166 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. X. great cataract, and consequently between it and Navy Island, there had been erected, from the neighbouring forest, one of its tallest pines, upon the summit of which was floating, in the pure freezing breeze, the British flag. Beneath, around, and for a considerable distance within view of it, were to be seen, in various cos- tumes, either on duty, or at recreation, in companies, detachments, or groups, 2500 Canadian farmers, yeomen, and other volunteers, who, bringing with them nothing but the clothes in which they stood, had left their families, and in defence of British Institu- tions, had, of their own accord, rallied round him whom they considered as their natural leader — the Speaker of their own House of Assembly. Their spirits were buoyant as the air they breathed ; their hearts bold as the scenery that surrounded them ; their cause pure as the deep-blue canopy over their heads, or as the unsullied snow under their feet. ' Occasionally an armed guard, their bayonets glit- tering in the sunshine, were observed marching along the shore to relieve the sentries ; and while their appearance was drawing upon them the fire of the American artillery from Navy Island, a number of young militiamen were to be seen in the back- ground of the picture running after the round shot that were bounding along the ground, with the same joy and eagerness that, as schoolboys, they had run after their foot-ball. Sometimes a laugh, like a roll of musketry, would re-echo through the dark forest, and sometimes there would resound a cheer that for \ f ■% Chap. X. THE FALLS OF NL\GARA. 167 id le le a moment seemed to silence the unceasing roar of the Falls ; indeed I had never before witnessed so much enthusiasm. On the following day the whole of the militia were reviewed, and the ceremony was not over when I was informed that a large body of Indians had just arrived from the interior recesses of the Province ; that they had taken up a position on the right of our line ; and that the chiefs wished to speak to me. As soon as I was enabled I rode to the groimd they were occupying, where I found a long line of armed Indians, painted for war, who, without evincing iny military stiffness, but, on the contrary, standing perfectly " at ease," remained motionless as statues as I passed them. On the right were assembled their chiefs; and, on reaching them, I soon found that their object in desiring to speak to me was to drive a bargain with me, the terms of which ehall speak for themselves. As soon as the customary salutations were over, the senior chief, with that astonishing stillness of manner and native dignity of demeanour wliich cha- racterize all Indian orators, briefly told' me that he and his brother chiefs had heard that the big knives (the Americans) had invaded the land of their great mother ; that, for reasons which they very clearly explained, they did not like the big knives ; that they did not desire to leave their great mother, and that they had therefore come to fight the big knives. Before, however, they raised the hatchet of war, they wished to be informed whether the wives of their ~m^ 168 TH.?] EMIGRANT. Cfhap. X. .1 • t cKiefs and young men who should fall would receive the same considciation that in the late war had been granted to the widows of their white brethren ? This plain question ought not to have been very difficult to answer. I knew, however, that in a cer- tain tenement in Downing Street there existed an unwholesome opinion (which, in beautiful language, was very shortly afterwards expressed) that it would be barbarous to allow the Indians to assist in repel- ling the invasion of Upper Canada by American citizens. I had no doubt of the fatal imbecility of such a policy ; on the contrary it was to my mind as clear as the sun that ';.^s shining upon the strange scene before me, that, although philanthropic objec- tions might be raised to the Indians accompanying a British force in invading the territory of the Ame- ricans, there could be nothing more just than to allow them, in defending their own territory, to assist in repelling invasion; for, against any com- plaints that might be raised, with what dignity might we reply, — " Our Indians never scalp us — never scalp each other — and they have only scalped you, because, in defiance of the laws of nations, you in- vaded their territory to rob them of their lands. If you think their habits of war barbarous, learn in future to leave them in the placid enjoyment of peace." But although I was quite determined that, until I should lece'i^e orders to the contrary, I would employ these Indians, yet I was particularly anxious not to deceive them; and I therefore told the chiefs and ;ive een Chap. X. THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 169 warriors before me, that in reply to their question I could only say the Provincial Legislature would make no distinction between them and the militia of the Province. As soon as this doubtful answer was translated, the chiefs, turning towards each other, gravely held a short conference, at the conclusion of which their red honest coimtenances became suddenly illuminated — the feathers on their heads gently waved in token of the feelings that were arising in their breasts ; and this slight signal being observed by their young men, who had been eagerly watching them, the war-whoop burst from, and ran along, the line like a, feu-de-joie. The note which each Indian emitted resembled the sharp, shrill yelp of a wolf; and when the whole of them joined in full cry, which must clearly enough have been heard in Navy Island, the sympathisers, I have no doubt, expe- rienced no very pleasing sensations in their scalps. But although our force thus hourly increased, it proportionably added to a difficulty which for some days I had been suffering under, and which, with- out exception, was the greatest I had to contend with during my residence in Upper Canada, namely, that of restraining the power which, under a moral influence, had rallied round the British flag. i or nearly a fortnight the militia, in obedience fn my repeated orders, without returning a shot, had submitted in patience to the fire of tw( two pieces of artillery, the property of the Gove^iiment of the United States, and which had offensively been planted by American citizens on Navy Island, the \ - 170 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. X. territory of their sovereign. Great as was this in- justice, it was the inmlt that appeared to them insup- portable ; and as plenty of boats were lying idle on our shore, and as everything was in readiness to enable our overwhelming force to ^and, and with the point of the bayonet to clear the Island, I was urged by various arguments to allow them to do so ; and at this critical moment my difficulty was not a little increased by the sudden arrival of several waggons full of the black population in Canada, a most powerful athletic set of men, who, of their own accord, and at their own expense, had come over to the frontier briefly to beg, in the name of their race, that I would accord to them the honour of forming the forlorn hope in the anticipated attack on Navy Island. They asked for no more ; and as they stood around me eagerly leaning forward for my answer, xt was evident from the expression of their yellow eyes, red gums, and of many of their clenched ivory- white teeth, that all they wanted was permission to avenge themselves on the invaders of British soil, where many of them, scarred and mutilated, had sought refuge from the slave States of *' the land of liberty " on the opposite shore. But although it was clearly evident that I ought not to be influenced by vindictive feelings of such a nature, yet I had arguments calmly submitted to me which it was very difficult to refute. First of all, my own judgment told me that I was liable to reprehension, and even to punishment, for the l6ss of any portion of the Queen's territory which had , r p. X. Chap. X. THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 171 been committed to my care. By many, wliose counsel it was my duty to respect, I was ad- monished that it was not politic to allow the militia of the Province to be subjected to insult and dis- grace. Many of my steadiest adherents seriously disapproved of the course I was pursuing ; and even Captain Drew, R.N., now in this coimtry, who, on the outbreak, had, with a musket on his shoulder, joined the ranks of the militia, and who was ready enough, when called upon, to do what was right, declared to Sir Allan MacNab that if the system I was pursuing was much longer continued, he should feel it due to himself and to his profession to retire from the scene. I need hardly say with how much pain I listened to observations of this nature, and how anxious I really was to recover the territory I had lost. On the other hand, the more I reflected on the subject the more I felt convinced of the propriety as well as prudence of the policy I was pursuing. ^. It is true tlie Americans were doing all in their power to provoke a war between Great Britain and the United States, but for that very reason I felt it my duty, by forbearance, to make every possible exertion to avert such a calamity ; and although the hourly increasing force at Navy Island was threaten- ing us with imminent danger, yet so long as we could possibly refrain from dislodging it by force, it was evident to me that I was working out a moral triumph of inestimable value to mankind. Ever since my arrival in Canada I had been occu- rs ^i 172 \ THE EMIGRANT. Chap. X. pied in a chemical analysis of the comparative advantages between monarchical and republican institutions, in the result of which the civilized world was not only deeply interested, but was al- ready more or less involved. Many great and good men in all countries were, I knew, looking to the Continent of America for the solution o^ THE prob- lem upon which the continuance of the governments of Europe and the destiny of millions, born as well as unborn, must eventually depend ; and now what was the evidence that the two opposite shores of the Niagara river offered to these political inquirers? Why, on the one side the citizens of the republic, destitute of respect either for their own laws or for the laws of nations, had invaded and were preparing to massacre and plunder a neighbouring people with whom they were at peace, and who had offered them not the slightest cause for offence ; and se- condly a Government, if such it can be called, was openly declaring that it had not power to protect its own arsenals from plunder, and that it was utterly incompetent to restrain its people. On the other side of the river were to be seen assembled men of various races and colours, Scotch, Irish, English, native Canadians, the red children of the forest, and lastly, the black population of the province. Ever since the retirement of the Queen's troops, the whole of tl^ese men had virtually been invested with abso- lute independence, either to continue under their monarchy or to become republicans. They had not only been invited to revolt, but had been told that, r X. ive r Chap. X. THE FALLS OF NL^GARA. 173 if they would but remain passive, others would revolt for them. The promise was fulfilled; yet, instead of hailing their " liberators," they had at- tacked them, had defeated them, and had driven them from the face of the land they wished to liberate ; and now, although they had rushed to the frontier of their country to repel foreigners, whose avowed object was to force them, against their wills, to become republicans — although they had power to overwhelm them, and were burning to do so — in calm obedience to their laws and to the adminis- tration of their Government, they submitted with patience to insults they were competent to punisri, and to aggressions they had power to revenge. And did this obedience exist only on the Niagara fron- tier ? and was it merely created by the presence of the administrator of their Government? No! It pervaded the whole province : it was indigenous to British soil. The supremacy of the law was the will of the Canadian people : it was what they were fighting for; it was what they themselves were upholding, not because it was a gaudy transatlantic European theory, but because it was a practical sub- stantial blessing — because it formed the title-deeds of their lands, the guardian of their liberty, the protector of their lives — because it was the sup- pressor of vice and immorality, and because it im- planted, fostered, and encouraged in the minds of their wives and of their little children, gratitude and submission to the Great Author of their exist- f / ' '■ t '.: ■' 174 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. X. ¥' i i ence. It was under the influence of tliis feeling, of this general submission to laws human and divine, that a small detachment of the militia had just been enabled to conduct, from the western frontier of the Province to Toronto, the American " Major-General T. S. Sutherland, commanding second division Patriot Army." This vagabond, for he deserves no other appella- tion, had had the cruelty, as well as the audacity, to direct a heavy fire of cannon upon the inhabit- ants (women and children) of Sandwich, from an American vessel, which he had conducted into the harbour l that town, under the pretence of liber- ating {Anglicby massacring) the British people. The Canada militia flew to arms. With feelings of indignation which need not be described, they rushed at their assailants ; many, regardless of extreme cold, jumped into the water, and then, in clothes frozen like armour, assisted their comrades in carry- ing the vessel ; but, having attained this object, their sense of obedience to their laws admonished them, instead of massacring their prisoner, " to bring him to justice." '... ... .... v k;.. r That sacred monarchical feeling saved the life of this republican miscreant; it protected him as he passed in irons through the town of Sandwich ; it protected him during his march for 190 miles through dense districts of the forest, in which a single rifle bullet from an impervious ambush could have despatched him ; and on liis arrival at Toronto y Chap. X. THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 175 it protected him, as he passed through a large assemblage of people to appear before me at Govern- ment House. Now, when, on the British bank of the Niagara, I gazed at, and reflected on, the two pictures before me, it was evident to me that, even divesting the one of the chivalrous and enthusiastic feelings which characterized it, and the other of the base passions which disgraced it, the problem was clearly : .^^ A >%^ '/ ^ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 872-4503 'A Q.r W. o V ^ 18t) THE EMIGRANT. Chap. X. derd thousand pounds to assist, if necessary, the people of Upper Canada; moreover, in doing so, the House actually rose and " gave three cheers for the loyal people of Upper Canada, and three cheers for Her most gracious Majesty Queen Victoria." From the Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick I received the following communication : — ♦* Sir, :0W( r " Government House, Fredericktori, " '"''■' ' Jan. 28, 1839. ' " In compliance with the desire of the General Assembly of this Province, I have great pleasure in trans- mitting to your Excellency the sum of one thousand pounds voted by the House of Assembly, and warmly concurred in by the Legislative Council, for the purpose of being applied, under your Excellency's directions, to the relief of the immediate necessities of such of their loyal fellow - subjects in the Canadas and their families, as have been sufferers from the recent inroads by brigands from the United States, *' I cannot refrain from acquainting your Excellency that this, the first vote ' in supply ' of the present Session by the representatives of the people of this loyal Province, was passed by them not only without a sinj^le dissentient voice, but literally by acclamation, the whole House rising (as would have done the whole people) and cheering upon the occasion. " I have the honour to be, &c., (Signed) ♦* J. Harvey." At this moment of triumph, effected, not by me, but by the intrinsic merit of British institutions I had sworn to uphold, it is a matter of history that I waa relieved from the post I was occupying for Chap. X. y, the ng so, jers for cheers I." nswick Ickton, General m trans- L pounds )ncurred )f being tie relief I fellow - ,ve been om the |cellency Session Irovince, Isentient rising bg upon CY." ly me, lions I that I ig for Chap. X. THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 181 l?Aving refused, during the conflict in which I had been involved, to select and raise to the bench Mr. Bidwell, the late Speaker of the republican minority, who, in consequence of having advocated " respon- sible government," had lost his election and seat in the House, and who, on the breaking out of the rebellion, had self-convicted retired to the United States, where of his own accord he publicly abjured his allegiance to the British Crown. „/ , \ / 182 THE EMIGRAin:. Chap. XI. CHAPTER XI. 3 THE APOLOGY. In the amicable adjustment of every question of dis- pute between individuals of high honour, or between nations of high character, there are certain words to which most especial importance has invariably been attached, and first and foremost in this vocabulaiy stands the word " apology." In every case in which an individual has received unjustifiable insult, or in which a nation has reason- ably complained of agg?:ession, reparation has usually been demanded either by the payment of money, or ' by the ofiending party consenting to use towards the other the word " apology." A man of honour does not want more, cannot take less ; and this has always been so clearly understood, that in the amicable settle- ment of cases of this nature it has been customary for the advocate of the ofiended party to say to the advocate of the ofiending party, " Use but the word * apology* and you may accompany it with almost whatever other words you may think proper, but that detergent word mu^t be ' pronounced.' " Now, as regards the case of the * Caroline/ the facts are shortly as follows : — So long as the citizens of the United States were firing their State artillery upon the unoffending sub- kxi. Chap. XI. THE APOLOGY. 183 dis- .«. / jects of the Queen of Great Britain the Federal Go- vernment at Washington saw no great reason for complaining of the policy of forbearance I had been pursuing ; but the instant that the British force, after a fortnight's endurance, presumed, in self-defence, to strike a solitary blow in return, the President of the United States (vide his mjssage to Congress, and other papers printed and laid before Parliament) de- clared the act ** an outrage,** and demanded for it from the Queen of Great Britain " atonement and reparation,*' Now, as this demand involves considerations of the highest importance, I deem it necessary to state the following facts previous to offering a few observa- tions on the subject. 1st. Within a few days of the capture of the * Caroline,' the Governor of New York directed a Commissary-General of no very great capacity to re- cover, if he could, the State artillery from Navy Island. The following extraordinary and very honest letter, addressed by this gentleman to Sir Allan MacNab, and which has been printed and published in Upper Canada, is the official evidence of an American officer, showing very clearly the practical working of re- publican institutions : — To Colonel MacNab^ commanding the British Forces on the Niagara Frontier. " Sir, ** Enclosed I send you a copy of a letter from Van Ransalaer, that you may the better appreciate the embar- rassing si'Juation in which I am placed. 184 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XI. •* From the first moment after my arrival oo this fron- tier, down to the present time, I have sedulously endea- voured to accomplish the purposes of my mission by every pacific and moderate measure which my own or the inge- nuity and wisdom of my advisers jpould suggest, and all without the slightest success. *' For your kind and generous forbearance and courtesy during the pendency of our negotiations I tender you my grateful acknowledgments. ** / can ask for nothing Tnore at your hands ; and if the poor deluded beings who have encamped on Navy Island an sladnf their blood be upon their own head — not mine. *' I have, &c., (Signed) " Henry Arcularius, ^ _ -y . *• Commissary-General." '^'^- m \\i. }y 2nd. Besides the occupation of Her Majesty's ter- ritory of Navy Island by " General Van Kansalaer,"ci and the firing upon the inhabitants of Sandwich by ' the American " Major- General T. S. Sutherland, com- manding second division of the Patriot Army," an American force, armed with ^ew United States, muskets, had landed on another part of Canada (Point Pelee), and af^er killing and wounding thirty of Her Majesty's soldiers, under the command of Colonel the Honourable C). Maitland, had returned to the territory of the United States. 3rd. About the same time another part of Upper Canada (Bois Blanc Island) was invaded by five hundred armed American citizens, who, besides firing upon or imprisoning all Her Majesty's subjects whom they could find, carried ofif to the United \^ Chap. XI. THE APOLOGY. 185 States horses, hogs, sheep, cattle, and poultry, valued at upwards of WOOL sterling. 4th. About the same time a party of Americans captured and burned a large British steamer named * the Sir Robert PeeV Considering, at the period of the destruction of the * Caroline,' how completely the American people on the northern frontier of the United States had cast aside all respect for their own Government — for the British Government — for the Laws of Nations — arid for the solemn treaty which existed between Great Britain and the United States, it may seem out of character with such violence, and with the repeated insults to Her Majesty which have just been detailed, coolly to argue on the legality or ille- gality of my having at last been driven, as an act of self-defence, to destroy an offensive engine which, had it continued to operate, would most certainly have overpowered me. As, however, the demand of the President of the United States for " reparation and atonement " in- volves principles of vast iiiiportance, it is necessary that the subject of his claim should be fairly and dis- passionately considered. ■ Nothing in international law can be more clear than that the American Government has no right, in time of peace with Great Britain, to fire, or to allow their citizens to fire, the United States artillery upon any portion of the British empire. If the United States Government had organized and equipped an army within its own territory for the avowed purpose 186 THE EMIGRA.NT. Chap. XI. iv i I of invading Upper Canada, we should not liave borne with it. If this army had invaded us, we should have resented it as an act of war. If the * Caroline' steamboat had been employed by the Government of the United States as a troop-ship or transport for the purpose of supplying this army which had invaded us, we should have been justified in de- stroying her. Why, then, if these acts could not be done with ^ impunity by the Grovernment of the United States, should we suffer them from a portion of its people "^ acting within its jurisdiction ? The answer is, the United States Government^ could not restrain its people. To this it must in general terms be replied, that ' a Government which wants either the will or the power to perform its functions cannot be considered ' or treated as a Government in places where that will or power does not exist. j; ' ,»^ If a government be superseded by popular violence it cannot complain of a usurpation of its rights, for. the plain reason that, at the time of the alleged usur- pation, it was not in possession of the exercise of those rights of which it alleges the usurpation. Again, it is argued (vide papers laid before Par- liament) that th3 United States are neutral, and that one belligerent power has no right to pursue another '■ belligerent power into the territory of a third which is neutral. To this argument there are two conclusive objec- *i. tions : — h ■i: .XI Chap. XI. THE APOLOGY. 187 w v,\: 1st. That there are not in the case of the * Caro- line' two belUgerent powers, and therefore there cannot be a neutral — there cannot be a middle, with- out at least two extremities. 2nd. It is not the exercise of neutrality to peimit the organization and equipment of forces hostile to a belligerent power, within the territory, and with the means of the neutral. The very fact of the * Caroline* being claimed as American property, and the persons killed in defend- ing her as American citizens, shows clearly the absurdity of setting up the * Caroline,* her crew, and the Navy Island army as one belligerent power, Great Britain the other, and the United States the third. But even if the Navy Islanders and their steamboat were admitted to be a power, it can only be considered as one with which the United States were at war, inasmuch as this third power had invaded their own territory, robbed their public arsenals, held their laws and authorities at defiance, put their arms on board the * Caroline,* and trans- ported them beyond the frontier, the owners of the * Caroline ' consenting to be in the service of this power, and committing acts of hostility against the United States; so that if the United States had reparation to demand, it should be from this power, instead of which they demanded . aparation /(?r them from us their friends ! But in 1818 this doctrine was most clearly ex- pounded by Mr. Adams, then Secretary of State, in a letter, which, by order of the President, he ad- 188 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XI. dressed to the Minister of Spain, respecting the seizure by General Jackson ol the Spanish forts, under circumstances singularly identical with the seizure of the * Caroline ' by Sir Allan MacNab. ** The necessity of crossing the Spanish line," says Mr. Adams, ** was indisputable, for it was beyond the line that the Indians made their murderous incursions within that of the United States. " By all the laws of neutrality and of war, as well as of prudence and of humanity, he (General Jackson) was war- ranted in anticipating his enemy by the amicable — and, that being refused, by the forcible — occupation of the Spanish forts. There will need no citation from printed treaties or international law to prove the correctness of this principle. It is engraven in adamant on the common sense of mankind. No writer upon the law of nations ever pretended to contradict it; none of any reputation or autliority ever omitted to assert it. ••^t^ *' The obligation of Spain to restrain by force the Indians of Florida from hostilities against the United States and their citizens is explicit — is unqualified. The fact that they have received shelter, assistance, supplies, and protection in the practice of such hostilities from the Spanish commander in Florida, is clear and unequivocal. If, as these com- manders have alleged, this has been the result of their MJeaA- ness rather than of their iwW, it may serve in some measure to exculpate individually those officers, but it must carry de- monstration irresistibly to tlie Spanish Government, that the rights of the United States can as little compound with impotence as with perfidy. ':"i\V: " The United States has a right to demand, as the Pre- sident does demand ot Spain, the punishment of those officers for their misconduct ; and he demands of Spam a XI. Chap. XI. THE APOLOGY. 189 just and reasonable indemnity to the United States for the heavy and necessary expenses which they have been com- pelled to incur by the failure of Spain to fulfil her engage- ments to restrain the Indians." And yet, in the teetli of this plain doctrine, ex- pounded by one President in 1818, another Presi- dent in 1840 demanded from the Queen of England ** atonement and reparation' for having, under cir- cumstances explained by the American Commissary- General Arcularius, defended her territory Irom in- vasion, exactly in the manner in which General Jackson had defended himself against invasion from the territory of Spain I Now, if the thirty separate Governments forming " the United States" think proper to borrow from the nations of Europe millions of money under one principle, and then, under another principle, or rather in defiance of all principle, to repudiate their respective debts; if they thus deem it advisable to demonstrate to the civilized world how much easier it is for the citizens of the republic to promise than to perform, to preach honesty than to practise it; the evil is comparatively of small importance; and, at all events, by the remedy which the Reverend Sydney Smith so moderately administered, the re- currence of the offence has been effectually pre- vented : — but surely the President of the United States should not be allowed to vary the laws of nations at his will ; and while he is demanding from Spain reparation for a particular descripti'^n of out- rage, which he clearly explains, to commit himself \! 190 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XI. this very same outrage on th j Queen of England ; and then to require from Her Majesty herself repa- ration and atonement for the insult she has received from him ! The violation of the American boundary by Sir Allan MacNab in capturing the * Caroline * is identical with the trespass which a man would un- doubtedly commit were he to go into his neighbour's garden to remove from it the foot of a ladder which the said neighbour from the said garden had reared against his (the trespasser's) house, and from which he (the saH neighbour) was wantonly firing upon his (the trespasser's) inoffensive family. Tliat Sir Allan MacNab violated the America} \ boundary is undeniable ; but it is equally true that this act of aggression consisted solely of a fi^e minutes' violation, in the middle of the night, of American water. Now, giving to this act of aggres- sion the utmost weight which the most subtle advo- cate could impart to it, surely before the Queen of England was advised to use the word " apology*^ with reference to this act, we should have considered that there were two sides to this grievance-account, ,and that on the British side of the ledger there stood recorded — 1st. A fort light's violation and occupation by the Americans of Her Majesty's territory. Navy Island. 2nd. The firing by American citizens upon Her, Majesty's subjects from the said island for fourteen days irom twenty-two pieces of artillery, the pro- perty of the American (jovemme «!>■ Chap. Xr. THE APOLOGY. 191 jland ; repa- jeived e 3rd. The firing of American cannon upon Her Majesty's town of Sandwich, U.C., from an Ame- rican vessel directed by the American citizen, ** Major-General T. S. Sutherland.'* 4th. The murder and wounding by American citizens, armed with new United States' muskets, of thirty British soldiers. 5th. The invasion by American citizens of Bois Blanc Island, the imprisonment of Her Majesty's subjects there, and the robbery of their cattle to the amount of 1000?. sterling. Of all the blustering demands that have ever been made since the creation of the world, the attempt of the President of the United States not only to twist this grievance-account to his favour, but, in the form of an apology, to require from the British Sovereign immediate payment of his side of the account, which he was pleased to term — its balance, was, without any exception, the most preposterous. Indeed, there had been for A'arded to Canada a powerful despatch, the substance of v^hich was printed and published in the Province, stating " that the Queen^s Advocate, Attorney and Solicitor General, had reported it to be their opinion that, under the circumstances stated by Sir Francis Head, the capture and destruction of the Caroline was lawful " to which the Secretary of State for the Co- lonies added hi' own impression, " that it was justi- fiable and praiseworthy." Lord Palmerston also unhesitatingly declared in mi' 192 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XI. the House of Commons (vide Hansard, 9th Feh- ruary, 1841), that " Her Majesty's Government considered the capture of the ' Caroline/ under the circumstances, to have been a proceeding perfectly justifiable by the consideration of the necessity of defending Her Majesty's territory. " That that opinion had been submitted both to the Mini£*-er of the United States here, and, he believed, by Mr. Fox to the American Government." However, it appears that there existed in the Home Government an anxiety to get this vexaticus aiFair what is now-a-days called " settled" and cer- tainly very quickly settled it was. From the correspondence presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty, in 1843, it appears that on the 27th of July, 1842, Mr. Webster, on behalf of the President of the United States, explained his case as follows : — • <• " The act of which the Government of the United States complains is not to be considered as justifiable or unjustifiable, as the question of the lawfiilness or unlaw- fulness of the employment in which the * Caroline ' was engaged may be decided the one way or the other. That act is of itself a wrong and an otFence to the sove- reignty and dignity of the United States, being a violation of their soil and territory ; a wrong for which to this day no atonement or even apology has been made by Her Majesty's Government. -• ; - "Your Lordship cannot but be aware that self respect, the consciousness of independence, and national equality, ■'/"^ \ \. V . ■ Chap. XI. THE APOLOGY. 193 and a sensitiveness to whatever may touch the honour of the country, — a sensitiveness which this Government will ever feel and ever cultivate, — make this a matter of high importance ; and I must be allowed to ask for it your Lordship's grave consideration. " I have, &c., , >.«4i ' (Signed) ** Danl. Webster." "'Kow, although the British minister had been unwilling to offer the ** atonement and apology *' alluded to in the foregoing letter of Mr. Webster, it appears that within twenty-four hours he made to him the following submission : — * ■^•<' *' Nearly five years are now past since this occurrence ; there has been time for the public to deliberate upon it calmly : and I believe I may take it to be the opinion of candid and honourable men, that the British officers who executed this transaction, and their Government who ap- proved it, intended no slight or disrespect to the sovereign authority of the United States. That they intended no such disrespect, I can most solemnly affirm ; and I trust it will be admitted that no inference to the contrary can fairly be drawn, even by the most susceptible on points of national honour." '^'^ ' . '• One would have thought that *Hhe most suscep- tible nation on points of national honour '* ought to have been satisfied with this declaration in the name of the Queen of Great Britain, that, in the capture of the Caroline, no slight or disrespect to the sove- reign authority of the United States was intended ; but the British Government, as if foreseeing that, without the use of the word ** apology," this trouble- some business coald not quickly be " settled " — and o ii If-' m m m III n ^ 194 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XI.' that any mention of the murder of the Queen's soldiers — of the invasion of the Queen's territory — and of the plunder of the Queen's subjects, might seriously embarrass the negotiation, added, — " What is perhaps most to he regretted is, that some expla- naticm and apology for this occurrence was not immediately made. ^^ The capitulation tts complete — the humiliation was deemed sufficient ; and accordingly Mr. Web- ster was authorised to address to the British Minister as a receipt in full of all demands, a despatch, of which the following are extracts, and which, con- sidering the fearful odds between the respective complaints of England and the United States against each other, is certainly the greatest triumph of an unjust demand, which, in the annals of diplomacy, has ever been recorded. ' ■ - v^ '■^'X'i '•*■'' V (copy.) J. >^^>- •;^;. ■" U\U^ ^ >. ' • '!^>; , ; "i. " Department of State, '?■: •:> ^ *' Washington^ August 6, 1842. *♦ My Lord, ^ .■*-..' '* Your Lordship's note of the 28th of July, in answer to mine of the 27th of July, respecting the case of the ' Caroline,' has been received, and laid before the President. ' *'The President sees with great pleaF-^re that your Lordship fully admits that great principle of public law apphcable to cases of this kind which this Government has expressed. " Seeing that the transacuon is not recent, having hap- pened in the time of one of his predecessors ; seeing that Chap. XL THE APOLOGY. 195 ■■■■■'< 1842. hap- ig that your Lordship, in the name of your Government, solemnly declares that no slight or disrespect was intended to the sovereign authority of the United States ; seeing that it is acknowledged that, whether justifiable or not, there was yet a violation of the territory of the United States, and that you are instracted to say tha<- vour Government con- sider that as a most serious occurrence ; seeing, finally, that it is now admitted that an explanation and apology for this violation was due at the time ; the President is content to receive these acknowledgments and assurances in the conciliatory spirit which marks your Lordship's letter, and will make this subject, as a complaint of viola- tion of territory, the topic of no further discussion between the two Governments. '■- v"-:- -.; .v---, ,*< . ^.;.i:-:rv^:^v .v.-/'.^^- . *'Ihave, &c., -^-liy' ' ^H^^.^^ '■;•/'-- ^^ . •/• X- ., r ' / (Signed) " Daj^iel Webster." ^' As history will not, I hope, blame me for the apology that has been offered for my defence of the Queen's territory, I can truly say that the mortifica- tion which for a moment this apology created in my mind has completely subsided. But the constitu- tional party in our North American Colonies, who took arms to maintain Conservative principles, deeply feel that the noble cause in which they came forward has been tarnished by an uncalled-for sub- mission ; they feel that, while neither their lives nor their properties have been duly noticed, the demands of democracy have been too readily conceded. The best-educated men in our North American Colonies are indignant at the former having, as they say, been sacrificed in an unworthy attempt to appease 196 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XI IP' Mil ii m the latter. They complain that, like the soldiers of Whitelock, they have been irresolutely commanded — thi.l; they have been misgoverned by a timid 3ourse of policy, upon which it is irfipossible for thorn in future to rely ; in short, they are in r. state of despair, caused by a firm conviction that, in the apology made by England foi' the destruction of the Caroline, their interests and their honour have been alike sacrificed. " ^..^•f :-, ? There are, I know, among onr most worthy states- men many who believed that the dishonour of this apology, though great, would be amply repaid by its pacific results. Great, however, must have been their disappointment when they perceived that democracy, instead of bring satiated, was ex- cited by our weakness ; and that when we grasped at the reward of our policy, wc .eaped nothing but the mortification and disappointment of hearing those who at such a costly sacrifice of principle we had endeavoured to conciliate, openly and ungrate- fully exclaim, — "And NOW, HURRAH FOR THE Oregon ! f> ■■ — i >■ ■ 7- » .,, /!«'. ' -W'f'' ■r.'!-. ■v I 4 'f- i': Mv ■v.V>'' ;^;, -^;- Chap. XII. THE HUNTED HARE. 197 THE I'-. ■' ' ■<• ■ ■ . > : CHAPTER XII. THE HUNTED HARE. It is over ; — and so it does not now matter ; — never- theless it is a historical fact to which some minds may attach curious importance, that although by statute-law hare-hunting ends in England on the 27th of February, it was not until the 23rd of March that the anxieties I had so long been suffer- ing suddenly ceased. - •>^' •■ On that day, at noon precisely, I had proceeded to Parliament Buildings to attend the swearing-in of my successor ; and as soon as this important cere- mony was over, bowing in silence, first to him and then to his Executive Council — who had so long been my own faithful advisers, and whom I now left seated on each side of him in the Council Chamber — I descended the stairs, and then opening a private door, I found myself at once and alone in the pure fresh air. -^ It was a most heavenly day ; and although the ground before me was still sparkling with snow, and although the harbour behind me was still covered with ice as thick as in the depth of winter, the sun was quite hot, the a^"" highly exhilarating, and the Canada sky I fancied bluer and more magnificent 198 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XII. II:; t 'I !!^ :'t than I had ever beheld it ; indeed, it was altogether to me a moment of overwhelming enjoyment ; and the sunshine which gilded everything I beheld was but an emblem ^f that which was gladdening my own heart, in the fulness whereof I could not help fervently muttering to myself, ' * Thank God, I am at last relieved!" for although there is certainly nothing to boast of in the feeling, yet I may as well confess, that even if my political existence in Canada had been, what is commonly called, " a bed of roses," , it would have been peculiarly uncongenial to my taste, as well as to habits which, good or bad, had become too old to alter ; indeed, for so many years of my life I had enjoyed uninterrupted quietness and retirement, that nothing short of scarification . could, I fancied, erase from my mind a number of deep wrinkles, which, after all, ugly as they might appear, I did not wish to have removed. The pin- nacle of power, like the mast-head of a ship, was, I had long known, a bleak, lofty, lonely, exposed, de- solate spot — in fact, a place of punishment. I had, therefore, no desire in the evening of my life to seat myself upon it to be an object for every man to gape and ga^e at, well knowing that I could not even for a moment descend from it, for exercise or recreation, but that the countenances of every happy group would gradually become formal, rigid, and joyless, as I approached them. But besides my natural inaptitude for the lofty position I had been occupying, and besides the rough weather to which I had politically bf^en ex!- V Chap. XII. THE HUNTED HARE. 199 posed, I had been attended by one unceasing sorrow, namely, tha'. of being obliged to act contrary to the policy of those whom I was serving, and to whom, as in duty boimd, I had long ago tendered my resignation, but in va^n. However, my burden, of whatever it might have been composed, had now dropped from my shoulders — the millstone had sud- denly been detached from my neck, my portmanteau ivas ready packed, and although the navigation of Lake Ontario had not yet opened, and although all its bays, harbours, and rivers were still frozen up, the steamer which had imdertaken for me to break this embargo was lying outside the ice, smoking, hibsing, and only waiting to receive me. Accord- ingly, almost immediately after my return to Govern- ment House, and (for reasons which will shortly be explained) without servants, or any attendant, but Judge Jones, wh^ had most kindly expressed a wish to accompany me, I rode towards the vessel, around which I found assembled a very large, and by me unexpected, concourse of the militia, and of others of various classes, to whom I had been equally in- debted. Without detaining them a moment, I dismounted, and stepped on board, and, as the vessel, uncasting the hawser which had detained it, instantly left the ice, it received from them the ordinary salutations ; when all of a sudden there burst from every person present a shriek of exclamation, rather than a cheer — which I am sure neither they nor I shall ever forget — caused by the only mode I had of acknowledging the com- 200 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XII. pliment they had bestowed on us, namely, by taking off my h^.t, and then for a few seconds silently point- ing to the British flag, which was waving over my head. They well enough knew what I meant ; and their sudden response to my parting admonition was, I can truly say, the most gratifying " Farewell !" I could possibly have received from 'them. ■» v •. Of all the physic in the London Phannacopoeia, there is nothing that so magically gladdens a sad heart, and which so effectually illuminates with joy a care-worn countenance, as the variegated ideas which, head-over-heels, rush into the mind of every one who, with a fine vessel under his foot, has just sailed from the scene of ten thousand little troubles, and at the rate of about ten knots an hour finds himself traversing wave after wave of deep blue water. The change of element is a change of exist- ence, and, enraptured with the bright colouring of the new world, the mind simultaneously forgets the gloomy shadows of the old one ; and thus, for nearly an hour, I sat on the deck in the exquisite enjoy- ment of the tranquil scene around me. Our steamer was the only passage-vessel — the only box full of living creatures on a lake nine times as long, and from two to four times as broad as the sea between Dover and Calais, and as it gallantly pro- ceeded on its solitary course, before us, behind us, and on our right, the horizon was bounded by a cir- cular line; while on our left the distant shor^e of Upper Canada was rapidly passing in review. Occasionally I glanced at it, as the memory does ,V>;\-.' ,T \'V<1- Chap. XII. THE HUNTED HARE. 201 on a subject that has completely gone by ; but it was the open lake, or, so far as appearances warranted the appellation, the great ocean before me, that almost entirely engrossed my attention. I was on my way " home /" and yet, though the word was fondly imagined, and easily pronounced, there were some little difficulties in my path towards it, which, while the steamer is cheerily progressing, I will endeavour to explain. ' ' As soon as I was officially informed that my suc- cessor had been appointed, I, of course, had to con- sider by what route I would return. The direct road was through the United States to New York. In consequence, however, of the ex- citement created by the destruction of the Caroline, and by a reward of 500/. which had been offered for my apprehension, I considered it would not be pru- dent for me to take that path, and there being only one other, I wrote to Sir John Hervey, the Lieu- tenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, to beg he would be so good as to obtain for me a passage to England from Halifax in a vessel of war ; a request which he very obligingly immediately fulfilled. No sooner, however, was it known that I had made arrangements for returning by that route than, throughout the three North American Provinces through which I had to pass, namely, Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, resolutions •were agreed on, to evince, by public honours to me, their approbation of the resistance I had successfally offered to " responsible Government," and to the formation of that ridiculous anomaly, "a Provincial Cabinet. j> 1 1 202 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XII. I tsU As a display of this sort was not only uncongenial to my feelings, but would have elicited expressions of insubordination to the Home Government, which it would have been highly culpable in me to have encouraged, I declined every invitation from the three Provinces by replies, of which the following is a specimen: — ' ; v ••:.-- - . ^ " Gentlemen, " Toronto, March 19, 1838.;,; *' It has afforded me unexpected gratification to learn from your letter of the 13th inst., which I have this moment received, that a large and respectable body of the citizens of Montreal have done me the honour to invite me to a public dinner during my presence in Montreal. *' I beg you will be so good as to offer to the gentlemen who have evinced such a desire, my sincere thanks for this flattering testimony of their good opinion, which I can tmly assure them I most sensibly appreciate ; at the same time, I request they will do me the additional favour of permitting me to express a desire not to avail myself of their obliging invitation to a public dinner. - • " **0n retiring from this Government, I shall to the utmost of my ability continue to render to the Canadas every assistance in my power ; but I trust, on reflection, you will agree with me in the opinion, that, on my journey to England, I should in no place do any thing that can tend directly or indirectly to agitate a discussion of any of those questions in which the people of the Canadas, as well as myself, feel so deeply interested. . ^^ , ,- " I have the honour to be. Gentlemen, \ *' Your most obedient humble servant, >' (Signed) *' F. B. Head. *» To tJie Hon. Peter M'Gill, John Mohon^ a^ ;?> y ■ '' and Adam Thom.^' "^ " ; , VT'' v i : ' '-^^t^ Chap. XII. THE HUNTEr HARE. 203 Having thus obtained for myself permission to travel privately to Halifax, I was quietly awaiting the near arrival of my successor, when by several friends, on whom I could rely, I was informed that a gang of discomfited radicals had not only deter- n^lned that I should not leave the country alive, but had swo^n to murder me on my road to Halifax. As I had received many threatening letters of this sort, to which I had paid no attention, I saw no sufficient reason for altering my plan, and I ac- cordingly persevered in it until the day before my successor was sworn in, when I received from Sir John Colborne, in Lower Canada, a short confidential message, warning me, on good authority, of the conspiracy that had been entered into to murder me on my way to Halifa?c. I said nothing to any one oa the subject, but a very few moments' reflection determined the course I would pursue,, and which appeared to me a very clear one. - - n^^ ■ :■■ , , .. v-^ ■ - • ■> - ' ■- .-.:.. '.. -..'v^^a^/ On retiring from the administration of the Govern- ment of Upper Canada, my direct path to England was that by which Her Majesty's Government had sent me to the Province, namely, through the United Stat^^s. Now, if by going another road I could have avoided danger, I felt it would be my duty to do so ; but, from the evidence before me, it clearly appeared that the lonely circuitous route to Halifax* was the most dangerous of the two, and * The distance from Toronto to New York, through the United States, Is about 350 miles; the distance from Toronto to Halifax about 1200 miles. m I ij 204 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XII. I therefore felt very strongly that whatever little difficulties I might have to encounter, I had better meet on the straight path than on the crooked one ; in short, that of two evils I had better select the road on which no one expected I should travel than that on which everybody had been led to believe that I should; and, after all, my judgment told me that, as I had little more than three hundred mileg to go through the United States, if I made the best of my way I should be enabled quietly to slip through the country before it was known I had entered it. ."v>. ._ • With respect to Judge Jones — who, without any exception, was the most calm, fearless man it has ever been my fortune to be acquainted with — I knew quite well that it was perfectly immaterial to 7dm which route I selected, inasmuch as, in accom- panying me, all he desired was to share my fortune, whatever it might be ; that is to say, to be tarred with the same brush, feathered from the same bag, or, if deemed preferable, to be ht^nged with the same rope ; and I verily believe, that so far as regarded his own personal appearance or comfort, he did not care sixpence which of the three should be selected ; and accordingly, as soon as I communicated to him my decision, it rsceivod his joyful and cordial ap- probation. ■■\:^'/i'' -v'- ■' '-''■ ' :■' . --V v -.;4-" My arrival off the harbour of Kingston was, of course, in a few minutes known throughout the town. For many reasons I was desirous not to attract notice ; but as it was impossible to preserve Chap. XII. THE HUNTED HARE. 205 'yv'A an incognito, I soon found that, of two evils, I should create infinitely less excitement by at once receiving the deputation that desired to wait upon me, than by declining. So soon, however, as this uncongenial ceremony was over, I sent for Colonel MacDonell, a brave and distinguished officer, who had volunteered to command, as well as to lead on, the proposed attack on Navy Island, and whom I h . 1 lately appointed shciiiF of the Midland district, and, on his arrival at the hotel, I at once told him of my intention to return to England through the United States. After a few minutes' consideration, he recom- mended that he should instantly call upon a portion of the militia to keep my secret for me, by cutting off, by a line of sentinels along the ic^e, all commu- nication between Kingston and the opposite shore, and to continue this embargo until two or three hours after my departure, so as to give me a suffi- cient start. This arrangement having been approved of, and carried into effect. Judge Jones and I left the hotel the next morning at five o'clock and drove down to the beach. The ice, which had covered the St. Lawrence during the whole winter, had only a few days ago broken up, and, by the force of the current, had been carried out to sea. The river, however, during the Avhole of the three preceding days, had been nearly covered with moving fragments of ice, of various shapes and dimensions, which had floated down from Lake Ontario ; and, as soon as the sun i ■ 206 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XII. had set, these fragments had adhered to each other, and the stream, which is here nearly four miles broad, had remained during the three nights frozen, but had again broken up so soon as the heat of the morning sun had disjointed the pieces of ice which the low temperature of the night had frozen together. When, a little after sunrise, we reached the beach, the river was in the congealed state I have just described; and as I had never for a moment re- flected — so I was totally unable to conceive — how it could be proposed that we should cross the wide rough mosaic pavement before us ; for the river be- neath this ice was running with extreme rapidity, and therefore, if, in the operation of crossing, we should happen to break in, it appeared to me that the current must inevitably carry, and then carefully keep us, most imcomfortably, beneath the frozen surface. The mode, however, in which we were to cross, though strange, was divested of the smallest particle of danger, and, as there was no time to be lost, we at once commenced the operation. Our two portmanteaus were put into a small boat, lying in readiness 3n its side on the ice. Two active able-bodied men, placing themselves on each side of this little craft, balanced it on its iron keel, and the four men then walking forwards puslied it along, iowards the United States, at the rate of be- tween three and four miles an hour. As soon as they started, the few fai-hful friends who had accompanied me to the beach bade me farewell, and this little ceremony having consumed Chap. XII. THE HUNTED HARE. 207 we a few seconds, Judge Jones and I had to run upon the ice till we overtook the boat, which we then closely followed. When we got about a mile from the Canada shore, we passed several parts of the river that were unfrozen, and at which the current was rushing and boiling 1*^ with great violence. In a short time as we proceeded the ice began to crack slightly, then violently, upon which the men steadily continuing their course told me to keep one of my hands on the side of the boat. We thus advanced merrily along amidst most awful cracks, until it became quite evident that we had reached a portion of the ice which, to use a common phrase, had resolved "to stand it no longer," and accordingly, with a loud crack of execration, the surface for some dis- tance around gave way; so we all gently placed our stomachs on the sides or gunwale of the boat, and without even wetting our feet found ourselves afloat, and very shortly were all standing up in the boat. Nothing could b^more perfectly secure than our position. The men, with long hooks in their hands, propelled the boat until it reached strong ice, when we leisurely got out, hauled the boat out of the water on to the frozen surface, and then, the men cheerfully pushing on as before, we proceeded, sometimes a quarter of a mile, when a second suc- cession of little cracks and great cracks again ended by our throwing ourselves horizontally on our sto- machs, and the boat beneath us again sinking souse into the clear water. 208 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XII. This occurred to us about half a dozen times, until, as we approached the opposite shore, we found the ice considerably stronger. As soon as we reached the land, the four men who had pushed us along took our portmanteaus out of the boat, tumbled them on the beach, and then for reasons that may be easily understood, treating us with apparent neglect, and as if they were heartily glad to get rid of us, they veered the boat's head round, and, pushing her towards the Canadian shore, they left. Judge Jones and me be- hind them. Our first object was to hire a conveyance, and as my companion kindly undertook this piece of errantry, I remained quietly with the luggage ; and I was sitting on my portmanteau, and with mingled feelings gazing on the Canada shore, when I saw, about a hundred yards on my right, a tall thin man, looking at me with quite as much attention as under the circumstances of the case I could possibly desire. In about two minutes he walked very leisurely towards me, and at last coming close up to me, he said to me slowly through his nose, " Straunger 1 ere you from Canny-BAY?" I told him I was; but not wishing to prolong the conversation, I took up a stone, and as if to amuse myself, threw it along the surface of the ice. He then asked me " how the trials were going on ?" to which I replied they had not commenced. He then after a short pause said, " Is your new Governor come yet ?" Chap. XII. THE HUNTED HARE. 209 "Ohyes!" I replied; "he came the day before I left." The man asked me a few other insignificant questions, and from sheer inquisitiveness would have gone on till sunset ; but Judge Jones arriving in a rough carriage he had hired, we put our portman- teaus into it, and then drove away. As the roads were very bad, we proceeded that day only about twenty- , miles, to a small village inn, where we got a good dinner, and in due time went to bed. The next morning we started in the only convey- ance we could get, an open waggon, such as is generally used, in which \ve proceeded towards Waterton, a considerable town, in which I knew there were a number of our fugitive rebels, and in which there had been great excitement on account of our burning the Caroline. We ought to have driven round this town, and under some excuse have sent into it for a fresh conveyance. However, after a short conseil de guerre, it was determined, for a particular reason, to take the usual course ; and accordingly, driving into a town I had never before entered, we stopped at a hotel on one side of the principal square. It so happened that several people were standing round the door of this inn ; and as I had not thought it right to disguise myself, as I had no occasion to enter it, as I only wanted a relay of horses, and as Judge Jones, the instant we stopped, went into the house and ordered them, the waggon drove away, and, being thus left alone in the square, (t 210 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. Xir. I sat down on a truck which happened to be near me. Of all people — of all beasts — birds-r-or fishes in creation, an American is the most inquisitive. Like a note of interrogation, he fancies he is constructed on purpose to ask questions ; and accordingly several idle awkward-looking fellows, after gaping and staring at me from a distance, indolently walked towards me for no earthly object but to cross- examine me on any subject. One came, and then another came; and then a third, seeing the other two, came to hear what they might be saying ; and so on, until among the little group that surrounded me I saw a sudden flash in the eyes of one of them, which clearly enough told me that he knew me; and, accordingly, in a very few seconds, he said to me, " Is not your name SiR Francis Bond Head ?" I told him it was. Several immediately asked me, with great eager- ness, if the trials had commenced, and what would be the result ? However, by this time our carriage drove out of the yard ; and so having answered the questions that had been put to me, and having no desire to wait for any more, I slowly walked towards it ; and Judge Jones joining me from the inn with a countenance of beaming joy and irresistible good humour, we got in and drove off before any of my dxill catechists had recovered from their astonishment, or had quite made up their minds what to think, say, or do. As soon as we got clear out of the town I told Chap. XII. THE HUNTED HARE. 211 Judge Jones that we had now no time to lose, and as by a silent nod he seemed to agree with me in this opinion, we very shortly proceeded to determine on •** the measures we would pursue. While I had been sitting in the square he had been " trading" with the innkeeper, and, according to the custom of the country, had paid him in ad- vance for a carriage with relays of four horses about every ten miles to Utica, a distance of about eighty miles. We therefore agreed that, as soon as we reached the first post, we would leave our portmanteaus to come on by the stage-coach, and then ask the land- lord to give us each a saddle-horse, instead of supply- ing us, as by his agreement he was bound to do, with four horses and a carriage. We were quite sure that this proposal would as readily be accepted as, in the story of Aladdin, was the magician's offer to exchange new lamps for old ones ; and, accordingly, hurrying our driver to the utmost speed his own temper, rather than his horses' mettle, would allow, we soon reached the post-house, and in a very short time I enjoyed the delightfiil sensation of being my own master on horseback in- stead of servilely sitting behind wheels. I need hardly say that our pace was a cheerful one; nevertheless, as I was perfectly certain we should be pursued, I foresaw that we should not be quite safe until we could get clear of the next post. As soon as we reached it — we were then, I be- lieve, about twenty miles from Water ton — we pro- P2 212 THE EMIGRANT. it Chap. XII. duced our order for four horses, and made our appli- cation for two; and although the strange bargain was ^ Vi\y accepted, a considerable time was lost befoi dge Jones, with his usual kindness, could get the iiorses saddled. During this interval I was waiting in a little room in the inn, when in walked a huge overgrown man, whose over-heated countenance clearly explained for him that he had been taking the trouble to follow me. His first nasal question, expending an enormous quantity of superabundant emphasis on the fifth word, was, *^Ere you Sir Francis Bond Head?" and as soon as I had replied that I was, he began a long incoherent rigmarole story about some cheese of his which some Governor of Canada had seized, and for which he desired to make me answerable. He went on in this strain for about five minutes ; and he was only waiting the arrival of about sixty horse- men, or rather men on horseback, who had started immediately after him from Waterton, and who, like a pack of straggling, ill-assorted, long-backed hounds, were following him, when through the window 1 saw our horses come to the door, and as I was anxious to get to them without disturbance, on the principle that one bluster is as good as another, I put the fore-finger of my right hand into my waist- coat pocket, and then fumbling to view the small- rounded end of a piece of black walnut wood, I walked forwards. The movement, trifling as it was, suc- ceeded, and, in a few seconds, finding myself again on my saddle, I gave my friend a farewell look, and i^m^ Chap. XII. THE HUNTED HARE. 213 then, with Judge Jones at my side, we started away upon our second horses. " And now, republicans," I said to myself with feelings which it would have been more becoming to have repressed, " if you can catch me I shall deserve all that democracy has power to bestow !'* But although our thirty couple of pursuers followed us for a considerable time, there was not the slightest chance of their overtaking us. Their horses were of course tired, and even if they had succeeded in getting ethers, the delay must have occupied much time, besides which, as the night was getting dark, as the road was full of holes, and as the Americans have no experience whatever in the common English art of " going-a-head" on horseback, I felt sure, every time my horse floun- dered in the dark, that the obstacle, whatever it was, having been overcome, remained behind an item in our favour. During the remainder of the night we were occu- pied sometimes in vainly attempting to waken up our various landlords, in unsuccessfully endeavouring to satisfy them of the reasonableness cf our travelling at such an unusual hour, in stirring up snoring " helps" to saddle horses that were fast asleep ; and then again, forgetful of the many nasal maledictions our project had received, in riding as fast as in the obscurity of the night was practicable; at last, by the time the sun arose, we were near Utica, where we arrived just in time to wash and repair our toilette, before the first train started by railroad for Albany, . the capital of New York, distant about 100 miles. I > 214 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XII. I was very little fatigued with the ride I had had ; but although the spirit of my companion was in- vincible, it was evident that the unusual exercise, which for my sake he had so kindly undergone, had considerably disordered, to say the least, one end of him, for his head was swelled, and his face, in con- sequence, appeared, flushed and overheated. By the time we had breakfasted we were required to take our places in the railway-carriage ; and I need hardly say with what indescribable pleasure we found ourselves gliding along the surface of the earth, without anxiety, troubles, or delays. However, as the shape of our caps, and the fur they were made of, clearly betrayed that we were from Canada, several of the passengers conversed with Judge Jones on the subject of the late rebellion. . The gentleman who sat next me observed that he approved of the Governor having sent the Queen's troops out of the Province, and thus leaving " the people" to decide for themselves ; and shortly after, while the others were talking, he suddenly turned, and asked me whether I (speaking of me in the third person) had yet left Canada ; upon which, in a low tone of voice, I told him, to his utter astonish- , ment, that I was sitting by his side ! i He behaved very much like a gentleman ; and, without making known to his fellow-passengers the little confidence I had reposed in him, and which, indeed, I had no intention to conceal, he conversed with me until we reached the city of Albany. As the steamboat for New York was there, waiting Chap. XII. THE HUNTED EAR! 215 for the arrival of the train, we had only time allowed us to hurry to it, and had scarcely been on board a minute when we found ourselves adrift, smoking, steaming, and scuffling down that splendid river the Hudson. On our arrival at New York, I was quite aware that I was not only out of reach of border-excite- ment, but that I was among a highly-intelligent people, and that I had only to conform to their habits to ensure generous treatment during the week I had to remain among them, until the sailing of the packet. Instead, therefore, of living in any way that might offensively savour of ** exclusiveness," I resolved to go to one of the largest hotels in the city, and while there, like everybody else, to dine in pub- lic at the table d^hote. I accordingly drove up to the American hotel ; but, thinking it only fair to the landlord that he should have the opportunity of (if he wished it) re- fusing me admission, I told him who I was, and what I wanted. Without the smallest alteration qf countenance he replied by gravely asking me to follow him. I did so, until he led me into his own little sitting-room ; and I was wondering what might be about to happen, when, raising one of his hands, he certainly did astonish me beyond description, by pointing to my own picture, which, among some other framed en- gravings, was hanging on the wall I When the dinner hour arrived, my worthy com- panion and I proceeded at the usual pace to the 216 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XII. room ; but everybody else, as is the custom, had gone there so very much faster, that we found the chairs appointed for us the only ones vacant. There was evidv^ntly a slight sensation as we sat down ; but of mere curiosity. A number of sharp glittering eyes were for some little time fixed upon us ; but hunger soon conquered curiosity, and in due time both were satiated. During the week I remained at New York, I had reason not only to be satisfied, but to be grateful for the liberal reception I met with. Although as I walked through the street I saw in several shop windows pictures of the ' Caroline ' going over the Falls of Niagara, detailing many imaginary, and consequently to my mind, amusing horrors, yet neither at the theatre which I attended, nor elsewhere, did I receive, either by word or ges- ture, the slightest insult. Several American citizens of the highest character in the country called upon me ; and I certainly was much gratified at observing how thoroughly most of them in their heirts admired British institutions. On the morning of my departure I was informed that an immense crowd had assembled to see me embark. Mr. Buchanan, the British Consul, also gave me intimation of this circumstance ; and as among a large assemblage it is impossible to answer for the conduct of every individual, Mr. Buchanan kindly recommended me, instead of going in a c£lr- riage, to walk through the streets to the pier, arm in arm with him. I did so ; and though I passed Chap. XII. THE HUNTED HARE. 217 through several thousand people, many of whom pressed towards us with some little eagerness, yet not a word, or a sound, good, bad, or indifferent, was uttered. I took a seat on the deck of the packet, and when almost immediately afterwards the moorings of the vessel were cast adrift, I felt that the mute silence with which I had been allowed to depart was a sup- pression of feeling highly creditable, and which, in justice to the American people, it was my duty to appreciate and avow. 218 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XIII. CHAPTEE XIII. HOME. During my residence in Canada, I had read so much, had heard so much, and had preached so much about " The OLD Country ^^ that as the New York packet in wliich I was returning approached its shores, I quite made up my m^.nd to see, in the venerable countenance of "my auld respeckit mither/' the ravages of time and the wrinkles of old age. Nevertheless, whatever might prove to be her infirmities, I yearned for the moment in which I might exclaim — " This is my own, my native land 1 ** I disembarked at Liverpool on the 22nd of April, and, with as little delay as possible, started for London on the railway, which had been completed during my absence. Now, if a very short-sighted yoimg man, intend- ing to take one more respectful look at the picture of his grandmother, were to find within the frame, instead of canvass, ^ *' A blooming Eastern bride, In flower of youth and beauty's pride," Chap. XIIL HOME. 219 he could not be more completely — and, as he might possibly irreverently terra it agreeably —surprised than I was when, on the wings of a lovely spring morning, I flew over the surface of " Old England." Everything looked new ! The grass in the mea- dows was new — the leaves on the trees and hedges were new — the flowers were new — the blossoms of the orchards were new — the lambs were new — the young birds were new — the crops were new — the railway was new. As we whisked along it, the sight, per minute, of an erect man, in bottle-green uniform, standing like a direction post, stock still, with an arm extended, was new ; the idea, whatever it might be intended to represent, was quite new. All of a sudden, plunging souse into utter darkness, and then again into bright dazzling sunshine, was new. Every station at which we stopped was new. The bells which afiectionat .ly greeted our arrival, and which, sometimes almost before we even could stop, bade us depart, were new. During one of the longest of these intervals, the sudden appearance of a line of young ladies behind a counter, exhibiting to hungry travellers tea, toast, scalding-hot soup, sixpenny pork pies, and every- thing else that human nature could innocently desire to enjoy — and then, almost before we could get to these delicacies, being summarily ordered to de- part ; — the sight of a crowd of sturdy Englishmen, in caps of every shape, hurrying to their respective carriages, with their mouths full, — was new. In short, it was to new and merry England that after a weary absence I had apparently returned ; and it was 220 THF EMIGRANT. Chap. XIII. not until I reached Downing Street I could believe that I really was once again in " The OLD Country ;" but there I found everything old : — old men, old women, old notions, old prejudices, old stuff, and old nonsense, and, what was infinitely worse, old principles ; in fact, it appeared as if the building in which I stood was intended to collect and remove to our colonies all worn-out doctrines that had become no longer fit for home consumption ; and although I was somewhat prepared for almost any unwholesome prescription that might be ad- ministered by it, yet I certainly was altogether over- whelmed with astonishment when I was gravely in- formed that Her Majesty's Government had just despatched to Quebec a Lord High Commissioner, in order, for the fourth time, to inquire into, and, if possible, explain to Her Majesty the grievances of the Canadas, and of her other North American colonies !! •- -■ - . So long as Monsieur Papineau and Mr. McKenzie, masking, or rather casting a transparent veil over their real designs, had asked only for " reform," there might have been something like an excuse for Old England stoutly disbelieving the various administrators of the Government who for the last twenty-five years, in different voices, had one after another been opposing the poisonous concessions to democracy which the home Government, under the name of " domestic medicine," had been pouring upon the free, the happy, and the loyal inhabitants of a New world. But the " Reformers " of our North American Colonies had lately, of their own Chap. XIII. HOME. 221 accord, dispelled all mystery or misunderstanding on tliis subject; and accordingly, in much clearer terms than any which a Lord High Commissioner could venture to use to the Queen, they had them- selves printed and published placards and proclama- tions, explicitly revealing, for the inforniation of Her Majesty and of all her subjects, their simple secret, namely, that separation from the mother country — in short, that rebellion, and not refonn, had been their object. But besides this valuable information, they had statistically supphed Her Majesty with a true and faithful list of all their own names ; and on the other hand, of the names, trades, and occupations of that overwhelming majority who had long professed, and who had just proved, them- selves ready to die in defence of her authority and of British institutions. ? . They had shown Her Majesty that the British population in her North American Colonies, with a few contemptible exceptions, were loyal; and that there might be no mistake, they concluded by ex- plaining to Her Majesty, that as the principal leaders of what they had termed " their glorious minority " had absconded to the United States, the portion left behind were as small, as insignificant, and practically as harmless, as the spots in the sun. . But while the inhabitants of our North American colonies had not only suppressed domestic rebellion, but had repelled foreign invasion ; in what state, I beg leave to ask, was the mother country ? Why, when I returned from Canada, Wales was in a state v: '. !' ' r' 222 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XIII. of insurrection — Ireland on the point of rebellion — there were tires at Manchester — riots at Birmingham, and even in the as^ricultural districts there were disturbances which were seriously alarming the Government. • t „ .:v]:;/ If, therefore, a Eoyal Commission were at that time to be established, would it not have been in- finitely more reasonable that three or four of the most intelligent of the native-born inhabitants of our North American colonies should have been ap- pointed by the Queen to probe, examine, and report to Her Majesty what were " the grievances " of the mother country, than that any one member of a population so dreadfully diseased should be ordered to prescribe for that portion of their fellow-country- men whom I had just left in the enjoyment of robust health? However, the great physician had already sailed ; and now comes the brief abstract of a political story, the most hysterical that has ever been acted on our colonial theatre, and which is occasionally so ludi- crous, and yet on the whole so melancholy, that it may justly be termed " the comedy and tragedy of errors. j> Whether it was that the weight of responsibility that had been imposed upon him was specifically more than his mind could bear — whether it was that the exalted pinnacle on which as Lord High Com- missioner he was suddenly placed, made his head giddy — or whether it was that the unexpected reversal by the British Parliament of an illegal Chap. XIII. HOME. 223 ordinance which he had issued, overpowered his temper, are now questions of no earthly importance ; suffice it to say, that overwhehned by feelings he was incapable to control, he issued under the Royal Arms a Proclamation, in which he protested not only against what he termed " the interference of the British Legislature," but " the treatment he had personally experienced in the House of Lords :" — " I assumed the Government," he declared in his pro- clamation, " of the North American Provinces with the pre-determination to provide for the future welfare and prosperity of them all. ... In this, I trust, usf ml course, I have been suddenly arrested by the interference of the British Legislature, in which the responsible advisers of the Crown have deemed it their duty to acquiesce. " I do not return to England from any feelings of dis- gust I have personally experienced in the House of Lords. If I could have been influenced by any such motives, I must have re-embarked in the very ship which brought me out ; for that system of Parliamentary Persecution to which I allude, commenced from the moment I left the shores of England. ' - ' . ; " In tRith and m effect, the Government here is now administered by two or three peers from their places in Parliament." Without waiting to be recalled, he took posses- sion of a British man-of-war, * The Inconstant,' and under these extraordinary circumstances he assumed his seat in the House of Lords. In a dispatch addressed to him by Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, and laid before both Houses of Parliament, it was stated that the 224 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XIII. terms of his Lordship's proolamation to the inha- bitants of our North American colonies — " appeared to Her Majesty's Ministers calculated to im- pugn the reverence due to the Royal authority ; to derogate from the character of the Imperial Legislature ; to excite among the disaffected hopes of impunity; and to enh nee the difficulties with which his Lordship's successor would have to contend." A considerable time after Lord Durham had de- nuded himself of all authority, there appeared in the * Times ' newspaper a " Report," afterwards In id before Parliament, signed by him — but, as is now well known, written by others — containing a series of assertions, ending by a remedial recom- mendation for the establishment of that very '* re- sponsible government " which the people of Canada at the hustings, in the Senate, and in the field, had successfully repudiated ! ,- . -v,v >■ xir On the publication of this extraordinary docu- ment, one Governor-General, three LtC Lieutenant- Governors, both branches of the Legislature of Upper Canada, the chief justice of that Province, and various other competent authorities, publicly declared that the Ex-Governor's principal assertions were inaccurate : — " The members of both Houses," said the reigning Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada in a dispatch dated 17th April, 1839, and laid before Parliament, " I find generally consider parts of the ' Report,* which refer to Upper Canada, to be in many particulars incorrect ; and a (( (c s V- \ XIII. Chap. XIII. HOME. 225 Committee of the House of Assembly has been conse- quently appointed to draw up a report upon the subject. •' They regard the Earl of Durham's scheme for the future government of Canada, as essentially the same as that which was advocated by Mr. Bid well, Dr. Rolph, and McKenzie, and to which the great majority of the people of this Province expressed their unequivocal dis- sent. *' There is a considerable section of persons who are disloyal to the core ; reform is on their lips, but separation is in their hearts. These people, having for the last two or three years made * responsible government' their watch- word, are now extravagantly elated because the Earl of Durham has recommended that measure. *' It was McKenzie's scheme for getting rid of what Mr. Hume called *the baneful domhiation of the mother country/ and never was any better devised to bring about such an end speedily. (Signed) *♦ G. Arthur." Sir Peregrine Maitland, who had administered the Government of Upper Canada for ten years, declared in a printed letter, dated 19 th August, 1839,— *' I have no objection whatever to its being stated that I have expressed to you my decided condemnation, with full liberty to disclose my sentiments, of Lord Durham's Report ; my opinion that it gives an inaccurate and unfair description of the Province and people of Upper Canada; and that it censures, ignorantly and unjustly, those who have administered the Government of that Province. (Signed) " P. Maitland." The Legislative Council, or upper branch of the 226 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XIII. Legislature of Upper Canada, stated in a report laid before Her Majesty, — " After an attentive and disinterested consideration of this subject, your Committee are led to the conclusion that the adoption of the plan proposed by the Earl of Durham must lead to the overthrow of the great colonial empire of England." In an address to Her Majesty from the Commons* House of Assembly (composed of the representatives of the people of Upper Canada), and laid before both Houses of Parliament, after declaring the statements of Lord Durham to be "unjust, unfounded, mis- chievous, and illiberal," it was stated, — " Your Committee will now close their remarks on the various allegations in the Report of the High Commis- sioner, that appeared to them to, require particular animad- version. If, in the course of their remarks, they have been betrayed into too strong an expression of reproach or indignant refutation, they trust that it will not be ascribed to a wanton indifference to that courtesy and respectful deference that should mark the proceedings of a public body towards those of high rank and station ; and, on the other band, they trust that they will not be denied the credit of having forborne to apply animadversions of far greater severity than they have used to many parts of a Report' which they can truly affirm, and which they believe they have clearly proved, to be most unjust and unfounded, and which are calculated to have a most mischievous influence on the future destinies of these Colonies." The report concluded with the following manly \ Chap. XIII. HOME. 227 and affecting appeal to the magnanimity of the British nation: — " Your Committee, however, are not willing to believe that the great nation to which these Provinces belong, and which has hitherto extended to them its powerfol, its parental protection, will hastily, and without the most full and ample information, adopt the opinions and act upon the recommendations of any individual, however high his rank or great his talents, that involve the future destinies of Her Majesty's faithful subjects in these Provinces." Notwithstanding these solemn and awful warnings of constitutional authorities which the Imperial Par- liament of Great Britain was bound to respect, the report of an Ex-Governor — who, after issuing the proclamation referred to, and without waiting to be relieved, had abandoned his post — was adopted. Responsible Government was forced upon the brave and happy people who had shed their blood to reject it, and no sooner was the patronage of the British Crown fatally transferred from the unfettered re- presentative of Her Majesty to provincial Ministers, by whom he was to be governed, than — the prin- ciple of Colonial Government being destroyed — there occurred a " bouleversement " of the Royal authority, such as since the days of King Lear has never even been imagined. >> The following sample of appointments and acts, all sanctioned by the Crown, will at once exemplify the lamentable predicament in which Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies — to whatever party he may belong — found himself, and must q2 \ 228 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XIII. inevitably find himself, under what, by the suc- cessful enemies of British institutions, is now sarcas- tically termed Responsible Government; in other words, " non-responsibility to the Colonial Office.'* 1. Solomon Lossing, confined in jail for high treason, was, by Her Majesty's Eepresentative in Canada, made warden (Lord Lieutenant) of the populous district in which he had been captured. 2. Dr. Eolph, who had been outlawed as a rebel, and who, as President of a Provisional Government which had seized upon her Majesty's territory of Navy Island, had offered therefrom 500 dollars for my apprehension, was appointed, and still is, one of her Majesty's Provincial Ministers. He was, more- over (vide the " Royal Gazette"), appointed, and still is, President of the Medical Board of Upper Canada. »• ,, 3. Ptobert Baldwin, Dr. Rolph's intimate associate, was appointed her Majesty's Attorney-General for Upper Canada. 4. M. Girouard, who commanded the rebels at the massacre of St. Eustache, and for whose apprehension as a rebel his Excellency Sir John Colbome had offered and ]paid 500?., was, without being required to refund that money, appointed her Majesty's Com- missioner r Crown Lands. 5. M. Lafontaine, his associate, was appointed her Majesty's Attorney-General in Lower Canada. 6. M. Valliere, suspended by Sir John Colbome, was appointed Chief Justice of Montreal. 7. M. Papineau not only received her Majesty's \ Chap. XIIL HOME. 229 free pardon, but as a further reward his brother (a Catholic) was appointed her Majesty's Commissioner of Crown Lands in Lower Canada, and his son, who had absconded with his father to the United States, where he had. abjured his allegiance to the British Crown, was appointed Prothonotary of the Court of Queen's Bench — salary 1000?. a-year. 8. Mr. McKenzie, the murderer of Colonel Moodie, on receiving her Majesty's free pardon, returned to Canada, where he is now as mischievously employ- ing himself as ever. 9. Mr. Hincks, the well-known confederate of Mr. McKenzie, M. Papineau, Dr. Rolph, Robert Baldwin, and of parties in league with the United States, was not only appointed, and still is. Provin- cial Prime Minister of the Crown, but on his being deputed to this country, it has lately been stated in the House of Lctrds " that her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies " (under the present system of responsible government it was unavoidable^ " had received him at his house, had invited him to official dinners, had obtained for him an invitation to the Queen's ball, and had corresponded with him upon the same terms as any Secretary of State would have received an accredited minister from a foreign state." Under this imnatural system by which the mother country has, in fact, wilfully made itself the de- pendency of its colonies, Her Majesty bj the advice of Messrs. Hincks and Co. has, it is well known, given her royal assent to a Bill, concocted by the leaders of the rebellion, by which the loyal 230 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XIJI. are now taxed to indemnify the rebels for the ex- penses they incurred in their rebellion against the Crown ! The working of responsible government may practically be demonstrated by the following anec- dote : — During the outbreak in 1837 and 1838 Colonel * * * *, a member of the Commons' House of As- sembly of Upper Canada, distinguished himself by his chivalrous attachnj^nt to British institutions; indeed, his conduct in repelling the invasion of the Americans was so noble, so daring, and so conspicu- ous, that the Duke of Wellington presented his son with a commission in the British army. On the establishment of responsible government he was, of course, on account of his loyalty, sub- jected for several years to indignity and neglect. Unable to brook such treatment, he printed and published very strong remonstrances against our Colonial Office and against the " Lords and Lord- lings ** by whom it was misgoverned. From bad language he got to worse, until, smarting under the clauses of the " Kebel Indemnity Act," he publicly announced himself in favour of separating Canada from the British Crown. His alteration of principles immediately constituted a claim for ad- vancement, and accordingly by the present Pro- vincial Ministers he has lately been appointed in the Eoyal Gazette as " QueevbB CounscV* ^ Having concluded a brief history of the establish- ment in our colonies of responsible government. \ Chap. xin. HOME. 231 it will be evident tliat it is now out of the power of Great Britain to prevent the disreputable conse- quences that must ensue from it. The Grovernor-Gencral, by the advice of his Executive Council, who, it must always be kept in mind, are to be dismissed the instant they cease " to possess the confidence of the people," has already passed an Act, since assented to in England, by which Her Majesty has been divested of every acre of her Crown Lands in the Canadas, the disposal of which has been invested in the Governor and Coun- cillors " responsible to the people." These lands, acquired by the blood and treasure of Englishmen, and which should have been the future home of the surplus emigrant British population, will no doubt now be applied to the worst of purposes. But be- sides this the power of the Crown has been so re- duced, that every public servant is now responsible to, and dependent for his salary on, the House of Assembly, and Her Majesty's Government in Canada mil thus be left without a shilling. In case of hostilities between Great Britain and the United States, an Executive Council such as at present exists, or as then no doubt would exist, can either by omission allow the Militia Act, as also the Police Force Act, to expire, so as to deprive the Crown of that valuable aid, or it can decline to sus- pend tne Habeas Corpus Act, by which means treason could not effectually be repressed. But a more overt course might be pursued. The Executive Council, under the plea that they \ 232 THE EMIGRANT. Chap. XIII. must be " responsible to the people," have lately demanded, and have had conceded to them, power tantamount to the appointment of the militia of the province. Should, therefore, the leaders of the House of Assembly ever again be induced to corre- spond with the Government and people of the United States, or, in other words, be bribed to sell Her Majesty's splendid provinces of Canada to the adjoining Republic, their course will be a very simple one. Through the Executive Council, and in the name of the British Sovereign, they will raise, arm, equip, organise, and drill an army, which they will officer, and which, masked under the name of " MlLiT^lA," will be ready to act at a moment's warning, as they might desire. In fact, it will be a force suicidally created by the Crown, which the loyal will clearly foresee to be in preparation to seize their persons and confiscate their property, as punishment for the attachment they have so obstin- ately evinced to the British Crown. During ihe decline and fall of our Sovereign's power in her colonies by the system I have but faintly described, the Executive Council, who gene- rally hold + nost lucrative appointments under the Crov^ rind it necessary, in order to satisfy the ma of " the people," or, in other words, to retain tneir offices, to be guilty of every kind of corruption. All men in office will be obliged, more or less, to advocate principles and to listen to lan- guage such as M. Papineau and his followers formerly used, insulting Her Majesty's representative, ridi- T Chap. XII I HOME. 233 culing everything that is British, and extolling everything that is Repubii9an. By this disgusting procedure their characters, as Conservatives, will gradually be lowered even in their own estimation. The bench of justice will every day be more and more polluted until the whole system of British Government will become despicable in the eyes of the most sensible men of all parties. " The domina- tion of the mother-country " will then really be " baneful ;" and whenever, under the bribe of the people of the United States, the remedy of separation shall be resorted to, not only will all the moneys that have been spent on that colony be lost to us, but, what is infinitely more lamentable, there will remain in it seeds of hatred and contempt for " Perfidious Monarchy, the friend of its enemies, and the enemy of its friends ! " For ages and ages our institutions will, in the English language, be execrated, reviled, and despised ; and thus by our own acts and deeds, by the establishment of " responsible government," which the heart of every honest man among us tells him is inconsistent with the dependence of a colony on its parent state, shall we, in a very few years, convert one of the noblest regions of the globe into a republican hotbed of hatred and disafiection to the British Name. ^ ' ' ;> ■ 'i THE END. *k!t' .«■-.-,• LONDON : PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET. ,1