Chapter X: Part 10

Under these circumstances Colonel Prince must be excused for using his foot; clearly it was the only free part of his anatomy. Some months before this trying pedal performance, Theller on the dock at Windsor had taken upon himself to lecture the Colonel, his “blessed privilege as an American citizen” so to do, after Prince had been similarly engaged with a French-Canadian whom he suspected of disaffection. Theller knew, “by the restless brilliancy of his eye, dastardly flashing like the electricity of an approaching thunderstorm,” what he had to expect. He quietly enough stepped on the ferry ready to leave for Detroit, concluding, “Thus was I rescued for the first time from the cherished revenge of this man!”

Between their last meeting and the battle of Windsor Theller had made his wonderful leap for life from the citadel at Quebec and was back in Detroit, ready to inaugurate more mischief just when the attack was the theme of every tongue there.

Perhaps the unkindest mention of the battle was the report given, as the events progressed, by the Detroit _Morning Post_, fresh from the wonderful spy-glass of the reporter: “The infantry are evidently citizens and, as near as we can judge by means of a spy-glass, are like men employed in an unwilling service. They move at the rate of two miles an hour, and have several times stopped, as though irresolute about proceeding.”

In his own country Colonel Prince was more of a hero than ever. His journeys were ovations. Hamilton, Oakville, Chatham, and London testified to a general appreciation. In Chatham “the incorporated companies saluted him not only with arms, but with hearty cheers;” at London the Union Jack was run up on his hotel, and fire balls were thrown about to make the night brilliant; the volunteers, under Colonel Burwell, came out to do him honour, drawing from him a short, pithy address in which he announced that should a similar opportunity occur a similar result would follow, and his only regret was he had given the much-talked-of prisoners a soldier’s death; addresses, signed by hundreds of the District’s best residents, testified to approval and continued respect; and by the time he reached the House of Assembly he was greeted with a burst of enthusiasm which was supposed to and did represent the feelings of the majority of constituents as well as of members.

“Let the journalists who can in their consciences vindicate the conduct of Colonel Prince ... come out boldly and say so,” was the challenge of those who did not approve. It was taken up. The approval became more emphatic, the friendly sheets were only sorry that he had not shot “every single miscreant of the batch,” and it was proposed to raise £50 to present him with a sword. The Park Farm had a New Year visitation from Captain Leslie and the officers of the Colonel’s battalion, Mr. Ross carrying the ensign; healths were drunk, and Prince’s came second only to Her Majesty in fervour, and continued three times three. In his response the Colonel told them that the disposition of those who were against him was resolving itself into a conspiracy upon his fame, but he meant to treat them as Sir Francis Bond Head had treated the rebels--allow them to go the whole length of their vain, inglorious and ungrateful measures, and “_then he would destroy them_.”

Prince promised not a whit more than it turned out he was able to perform.

About this time his Excellency Sir George Arthur took the Erie border towns in one of his tours. Prior to his arrival in Sandwich it was said that he was one of those who disapproved of Prince. To fire the first shot, the Colonel drew up the address which it was proposed to present, and, assuming the possibility of fresh trouble, foreshadowed results: “_Certain, instant and inevitable death at our hands will be their fate, without any recognition of them as prisoners of war, or as any other sort of prisoners._” Some delay occurred in the time of arrival, and the address was sent to Toronto. When the Governor did arrive, another, expressing very different sentiments, was presented--which he demurred at receiving. The people found he had nothing prepossessing in appearance, “indeed, he is as indifferent a looking person as can be imagined,” and all waited to see the result of the interview with their beloved Colonel.

Immediately afterwards there appeared in Detroit papers, and in large, closely printed hand-bills, an anonymous and detailed narrative called “The Battle of Windsor,” written on this side and printed across the river. A copy signed by a militia colonel and twelve others was sent to the Governor in Toronto, accompanied by affidavits vouching for the truth of the charges therein contained. At once a court-martial or court of inquiry was instituted, composed of Lieutenant-Colonel Airey, Major French of the 85th, and Major Deedes, of the 34th. Never did people more speedily occupy a pit which they had digged for others. The militia colonel had been proud to preside at the meeting where summary measures and no quarter were proposed and ratified; he was now proved to have made bad feeling in the service by his literary composition; to have exaggerated, and thereby lowered the character of the service; to have aggravated the feelings of hostility already rampant on either border--and he was relieved of his commission. A meeting at once took place between Prince and one of his late libellers, at

“A gentlemanly distance, but not too near,
If you have got your former friend for foe;”

shots were exchanged, the Colonel’s bullet lodged in his adversary’s cheek, the latter’s weapon was discharged in the air; and some dozen other challenges ensued. There was also the duello by correspondence, when sharp things were penned. Prince shook off his quondam friends, and one of them smartly replied, “You are at perfect liberty to cast off your quondam friends, as it may save them the unpleasant trouble of doing the same by you.”

The huzzas of the triumphant after all this may be easily imagined. His former townsmen in England set about getting up a testimonial; he was dined in Toronto, and made his usual triumphal progress home. The 85th were ready to draw him to the Park Farm, substituting themselves for his horses, and immediate preparation was made to dine and wine him in Sandwich. A carriage with the Dinner Committee was despatched to the Park Farm, preceded by another carriage containing a band of music, all under escort of the brave and loyal 2nd Essex Cavalry. The “flag of our country” and the green and gold colours of the Windsor volunteers floated over them; and on their return with the guest the carriage was brought up by a peremptory “Halt!” the cheering 85th set the horses free, and in the midst of the shouting populace, and to the inspiriting sounds of “See the Conquering Hero Comes,” took him to the officers’ quarters. Here “God Save the Queen” was struck up; and from the officers’ quarters the way was led to the dinner, set in an arbour of oak boughs.

Then--the Queen, God bless her, nine times nine; the Queen Dowager, Lord Hill of the army, and Lord Minto of the navy, all lesser fry who had to be content with three times three. The President called upon a hundred guests “to fill to the very brim--_which was done accordingly_;” John Prince, may long life and prosperity attend him--nineteen times nine, and one cheer more.

So far so good; from Halifax to Amherstburg every newspaper exploited him, every mail recorded fresh triumphs; he had only to show himself to be cheered to the echo. But he had yet to pass through the hands of Lord Brougham.

The ex-Chancellor was ready to fight any number of duels, rhetorical or conversational, of black-letter law or black-mouthed insinuation, upon any conceivable occasion. He now pounced upon the word outlaw and twisted it through all the maze of meaning. The “mealy-mouthed” Sir George Arthur’s opinion and the exculpation by court-martial availed not; nothing but insanity could excuse Colonel Prince. In his opinion he, Prince, was guilty of murder; he had made assurance doubly sure by anticipation of legal proceedings and results. That there was great support given Colonel Prince throughout Canada, advanced as a mitigating circumstance by Lord Ellenborough, seemed but to justify the ex-Chancellor in his sweeping condemnation. The Duke of Wellington drew attention to the fact that it was not Colonel Prince’s commission that was involved, or even his life alone, but the conduct of the Upper Canadian government; that if all alleged were true, another gallant friend of his, Sir John Colbome, whose duty it was to have brought Colonel Prince at once to court-martial and punish him, would have been remiss, and (evidently) warming to his subject, his Grace predicted that a system of retaliation would be followed, that if Her Majesty had not the power to protect her Canadian subjects the colony ought to be abandoned. “Is there a single spot,” he asks, “except that on which a soldier stands, in which Her Majesty’s authority is enforced?”

Brougham’s reputation when travelling was that at Inverness he was Conservative, but, changing his opinions as often as his horses, he was downright revolutionary by the time he reached Dundee; there at the full, at Edinburgh he waned. By the time the Duke of Wellington had finished Brougham’s sympathies were modified, and he ends with an opinion that if the Government of the United States had not power to repress such warfare they could hardly be called a civilized nation.

Upheld by the Duke, with the approval of the Imperial Parliament, rewarded by a commission in the 71st for his son--a gift straight from the hand of the great man himself--Colonel Prince held his head high for the rest of his life, took good care to keep out of Detroit, fought his remaining enemies to the last, and might well have said, “Honour and policy, like unsevered friends, i’ the war do grow together.” Always manly, he was ready to meet his former vilifiers half-way in a reconciliation in which Sir Allen MacNab, the Rector of Sandwich, Major Lachlan and John Hillyard Cameron undertook the rôle of mediators. All reflections contained in the skit upon the colonel’s valour were withdrawn, and on his side he expressed, in writing, his regret for his many hasty expressions. It was, in fact, a true amnesty, in which each party had to pay its own costs, for more than one bit of litigation had begun.

Well might a temperate New York newspaper say, “With all our hearts we wish those who feel themselves oppressed in Canada might have the liberty they seek, if they could get it without resorting to measures endangering the peace of the whole Anglo-Saxon race.”

“Come, Mighty Must!
Inevitable Shall!
In Thee I trust;
Time weaves my coronal.”

Huron’s Age Heroic.

“Huron, distinguished by its lake,
Where Manitoulin’s spirits wake,”

before ’37 had but one central point, which, to use a Paddyism, was on the very confines of the still primeval forest. The mysterious wilderness had a few spots between Goderich and the other limit of the Canada Company, Guelph, in which woodmen, thinking solely of the grain and roots to be grown in the cleared spaces, were unconsciously ameliorating the climate of their continent by the patches of sunlight their axes were letting in through the green gothic above.

At the one end Galt, “churning an inarticulate melody,” with shoulders straight and upright, caught his foot in a tree root. Pryor, his right-hand man, said, “Look after your feet, man, and keep your head out of the stars.” In a moment Pryor hit his head against a branch. “Man, keep your eyes frae your feet,” rejoined Galt, “or else you’ll damage all the brains you’ve got.”

They jested; but they made the way of the pioneer. And the pioneer is the Canadian man of destiny. He is in a thousand valleys and on a thousand hillsides, sometimes cold and hungry, but he swims on the crest of the wave, and sees the beginning of a new thing. The spirit of adventure which bore Columbus, Cabot, Cartier, and Champlain into untrodden paths, sustains him and makes him brother to them, even if his scope is but the patch cleared by his own axe.

The British distinction between Whig and Tory, like the London fog, was supposed not to cross the ocean with these pioneers. But in the wilderness of Huron they throve by ’37 with a vigour derived from transplanting. After the Gourlay affair men learned to put bridles on their tongues; but if, as in Governor Maitland’s opinion, all Reformers were deluded, unprincipled and designing, there were men in Dumfries, Guelph, and from the Wilmot Line westward, who could differ from that opinion and yet sing,

“Far from our Fatherland,
Nobly we’ll fall or stand,
For England’s Queen.
In town and forest free,
Britons unconquered, we
Sing with true loyalty,
God save the Queen.”

Dumfries and all about Galt was largely settled by shepherds from the neighbourhood of the Ettrick Shepherd, Galashiels, Abbotsford, and thereabouts. If any of the good Tory sentiments recorded at Ambrose’s are to be believed, the Ettrick Shepherd would have been dismayed had he known what manner of opinion some of his fellow-shepherds held in Canada. Walter Cowan, bailiff to Sir Walter, told his master he wanted to emigrate. “Well, Walter, if you think it best to go,” said his genial employer, “I’ll assist you; but if you ever need to give it up, let me know, and I’ll help bring you back to Scotland.”

But did any ever wish to return? “I have never been home again,” says one, “although I have often wished to see the place, and I don’t think my sons or other Canadians appreciate it half enough; but I never heard of any emigrant wanting to go back to _live_. If you have thriven here, you are too high to have aught to do with them you left; and those above you, no matter how you have thriven, are too high to have aught to do with you.”

“I was born at Yarrow,” continues a mellow old Radical, bedridden, but bright as the proverbial shilling, “and I was naught but a poor shepherd lad; now, at ninety-three, I am one of the most fortunate men alive. I am sinking down to the grave, bedridden, but I have all my faculties, and I do not use spectacles by day or night. I came out in ’34, and that journey across the Atlantic was my wedding jaunt, for I was married on my way to the ship, sixty-three years ago the 26th of May it was; and there at the foot of my bed they have put the picture of my good lady, where I can see it all day long. In ’35 I felt I must have books, so I said, ‘Is there anyone in this place will help me get some together?’ Then three men, all cobblers, came forward, and among us we started what is now the Mechanics’ Institute--three cobblers and a former shepherd lad; and that was the first public work I put my hand to here. When I was naught but a callant at home I mind how my heart nearly broke because there were no shillings to buy the books I longed for, and when Mr. Chambers brought out that journal for the people and we could buy it for three baubees, I thocht he was the noblest man that ever lived. On the way out there was a lady who listened to our talk, and I said I should never be content without a volume of Pollok, on which I had set all my desires. So when we came through Rochester she bought the book for a shilling, and made me a present of what I had so long wanted; and I thought this must be a fine country where books could be got for a shilling!”

After the arrival of Sir Francis, Judge Jones and Colonel FitzGibbon had their conversation about the bags of pikes and pike-handles and signs of their immediate use. Said the Judge, “You do not mean to say these people are going to rebel?” The Colonel was no Thomas; he firmly did believe. “Pooh-pooh,” said Jones, turning to Sir Francis, who wearied for his pillow. So Sir Francis, humane man, addressed by what he called “the industrious classes,” expressed himself in “plain and homely language,” with as much care as if intended for “either branches of the Legislature:” “The grievances of this Province _must_ be corrected; impartial justice _must_ be administered. The people have asked for it; their Sovereign has ordained it; I am here to execute his gracious commands.” Nor did these industrious classes, one time shepherd laddies and the like, feel more than the Governor himself allowed.

“I was a Scotch Radical, and would have helped Mackenzie all I could--until he drew the sword. That proved to me he was not constitutional, and I wouldna any such doings. I do know that if by my own puny arm, young and without influence as I was, I could have got rid of the Family Compact, I would have done it right willingly. A few days before the outbreak a neighbour told me of the great doings likely to be in Toronto, and I joked wi’ him. But he said, ‘Mind, man, it’s no joking matter, and it’s sure ye’ll see Mackenzie’s men through this way;’ and as I was a Scotch Radical he seemed to think it would be short whiles before I was in gaol. So I laughed, and said, ‘Well, if Mackenzie comes this way I’ll treat him well, for I have eight hogs hung in a row, and he shall have the best.’ I would have fed him and his people, for I would have rid the country of the Family Compact; but he didna mend matters to draw the sword.” Even such meritorious work must not be done in opposition to the Queen and country.

“I count only the hours that are serene,” is the motto on an old Venetian sun-dial. All the Canadian clocks must have stopped and the sun hasted not for a space of years in these exciting days when Canadians, but one remove in complexion from aborigines, allowed not toil, heat, sun, nor isolation to abate the vigour, ingenuity and resolution born of circumstances.

“William Lyon Mackenzie, hot-tempered and impulsive,” says another old Reformer, “had a keen eye for detection of a flaw in an argument; he lived by complaining, and had no thought beyond formulating and promoting grievances. So many years of such a tone of mind totally unfitted him for political life. When a practical question was put before him for a practical answer, the man was utterly at sea; his faculty of constructiveness was obliterated.”

Evidently, he who cannot live happily anywhere will live happily nowhere, and Mackenzie, “yellow and somewhat dwarfish,” bore out the supposed likeness to the _Yellow Dwarf_, a violent weekly journal published in London by an ultra Radical in 1819 and afterwards. Its editor, Wooler, set it up without copy, mind and composing-stick working together.

The _Colonial Advocate_ and Mackenzie’s pamphlets did their work in the country side. Lords Brougham, Melbourne and Glenelg were gibbeted in Toronto and afterwards burnt on the night of October 22nd, ’37, and the _Advocate_ informed them of it. It also kept up excitement about the “Kentish drillmaster,” corporals MacNab and Robinson, and the general system of rack rent; it stated that a pound loaf was at a shilling Halifax; that woe and wailing, pauperism and crime, were rife in a land never meant for the first three; that many in the new settlements seldom tasted a morsel of bread, and were glad to gnaw the bark off the trees. “But why are want and misery come among us? Ah, ye rebels to Christianity, ye detest the truth, ye shut your ears against that which is right. Your country is taxed, priest-ridden, sold to strangers and ruined ... Like the Iazzaroni of Italy, ye delight in cruelty and distress, and lamentation and woe.” He apostrophized the ruling Pact as false Canadians, Tories, pensioners, profligates, Orangemen, church-men, spies, informers, brokers, gamblers, parasites, knaves of every caste and description. It would be wonderful if each man’s grievance could not find an outlet with such a number and variety of scapegoats. “Never was a vagabond race more prosperous,” he writes, “never did successful villainy rejoice in brighter visions of the future. Ye may plunder, rob with impunity, your feet are on the people’s necks, they are transformed into tame, crouching slaves, ready to be trampled on. Erect your Juggernaut--the people are ready to be sacrificed under the wheel of the idol.” It is strange that he did not quote Culpepper: “They dip in our dish, they sit by our fire; we find them in the dye-fat, the wash-bowls and the powdering tub. They share with the cutler in his box; they have marked and sealed us from head to foot.”

When Mackenzie made his appearance in Galt in ’33 a very partial local critic calls him _somewhat_ of a political firebrand; he certainly was full of what in Lower Canada just then was called “fusées de la rhétorique.” He spoke from the south window of the village inn, with the usual results. One

“Whose rhetoric could rouse the Olympian host,
And scare into fits poor Demosthenes’ ghost,”

was no commonplace figure. Set on steel springs, the hands opening and shutting, the light-blue eyes sending keen and piercing glances through the ranks of “these people” before him, who were already in the best of training from the local agitator Mr. Bennett, the master of Liberty Cottage, “this fellow” spoke in a way direct and easy to understand. His writing was sometimes verbose, unequal and amateurish; but in speech “the superlative littleness of the man” was lightened by gleams of humour, facial expression and gesture which would not commit themselves to paper, nor did they hinder the deadly earnestness that carried conviction to any wavering mind. Now as he spoke a great clatter arose from an incoming crowd which bore a blackened, bedizened and hideous effigy of himself; the likeness was so good that the sight of it provoked a smile from the original. He paused in his speech and looked on in silent and grim amusement. Had he but known it, the lay figure held almost an allegory of the real. It was stuffed with gunpowder and other combustibles, and, as its original was destined to do, went off prematurely; it knocked down a man or two, but did no great harm. The figure wore a pair of very good boots, which someone in the crowd, not so well furnished, begrudged. The man worked his way through, seized the burnt brogues, and made off with them as fast as his legs could carry him.

It is marvellous the bandit was not arrested as a suspect; it took very small evidence to make a case. One Irish Loyalist, John McCrea, was sent a summons to join the company then forming in Guelph for the front; he considered his farm and home duties of more importance, and was at once reported as “disaffected.” Shortly afterwards he went to the general store kept by Captain Lamphrey, a retired English officer, and was asked, as was the usual custom, into the parlour for a glass of wine. To his surprise he there found three others, a bench of magistrates, who without further ado began to try him. Why had he not responded to the command to join the corps? Because he had private and important domestic concerns on hand. He asked for the name of his accuser and the specific accusation, but in reply was told he must give a bond for his good behaviour. This was surely the Star Chamber, Scroggs and Jeffreys, the secret-service principle of Mackenzie’s written and spoken diatribes, and Mr. McCrea’s justified Irish obstinacy rose as a wall against the combination. One of the trio offered to become the bondsman, but the accused contended its acceptance would be an admission of guilt. Mr. McCrea insisted upon knowing their authority; they could not furnish it, and there was an end of the matter.

Captain Lamphrey’s treats were full of unexpected results. One of the loyal, who carried despatches to Hamilton, went to him one early morning with signs of too many glasses already apparent and asked for more. The captain could not refuse, knew the despatch must go, and saw its safety was already endangered. He took H. M.’s special messenger to the cellar and drew a glass of vinegar. “Drink it, man; down with it! down with it!” which was done, and the lately demoralized special messenger was “as sober as a clock.”

It was a joke to the Wellington neighbourhood that one company should be headed by a Captain Poore and another by a Captain Rich. A brusque Yorkshireman, William Day, volunteered in Poore’s company. The roads were very bad, food was scarce, and as Day got hungry his loyalty waned. At last he demanded something to eat. This was flat rebellion; Poore called it insubordination, and said that instead of comforts Day should have night guard, and stand upon his feet until the small hours lengthened.

“So you won’t give me anything to eat?”

“No.”

“Then I know where I can get it, and that’s at Guelph. And I’d like to see the man that’d stand between me and that door.”

No one offered to do so, and he walked back twenty-six miles, “got his victuals,” and so ended his active military service.

Captain Poore had been endeavouring for two or three years to form a volunteer rifle company. There was little time, and less inclination, to play at soldiering; but by ’35, when agitation among the progressive begot anxiety in the less progressive, he succeeded in forming a company sixty strong, which drilled every Saturday in a corner of his own farm. Many of the settlers were not gushing in their loyalty to the powers that were, and, while not allying themselves with Mackenzie, “had the governing party been drowned in the depths of the sea not a solitary cry would have gone up for them.” Even the schoolboys were keen politicians, and regarded those who dwelt in the shadow of the Pact as very poor types of humanity. Those who were of the required age and ordered to meet for drill every two weeks at the cross-roads, but who had not sufficient courage of their convictions to refuse service, performed it in a half-hearted manner. The most regular attendants were the schoolboys. They snowballed the men and snowballed the captain, made game of the execution of the various military movements and of Mr. Hiscock. The latter was the drill-instructor, an old soldier, who dressed partly in military uniform and carried a cane. Pompously he walked back and forth, contemptuous of the roll-call. One little Englishman, when going through the required answers, was asked, “Married or single?” “Single, sir, but under promise,” was the reply.

Great, then, was the excitement when the news came that “_Toronto had fallen_.” On the day of the engagement at Montgomery’s Captain Poore and his men left Guelph, and Lamphrey, by now a colonel, with Colonel Young was left in charge of the portion which was to protect Guelph. The knowledge that Galt and Eramosa were strongly disaffected did not tend to reassure the home-guard. It was feared that Guelph, too, might “fall.” For days men busied themselves running bullets, and it was soothing to know that a quantity of powder lay in the octagon house should they keep possession of it--such stores, no doubt, would be seized by the rebelliously inclined once they were in action. In the town of Guelph itself it was proudly claimed that only one man was disloyal, and that he, poor fellow, was only driven so by too long and silent study of grievances, “an honest, decent man otherwise.” As the chief evidence against him was that he went through Preston and other outlying hamlets to buy up all the lead he could find, it seems rather hard that when this was reported he should be apprehended, taken to Hamilton, and lie there in gaol for six or eight months without trial. Mr. James Peters, maliciously termed Captain Peters and said to be at the head of fifty men who were on their way to burn Guelph, was awakened before daylight on the morning of December 13th by the entry of sixteen armed men; the leader drew his glittering sword by Mr. Peters’ bedside and ordered him to get at once into one of the sleighs waiting at the door. After leaving the Peters’ farm these valiant special constables stopped at the house of a farmer magistrate, who not only bade them welcome, put up their horses, and gave the entire party a good breakfast, but delivered an encouraging homily to the magistrate in charge--an officiously zealous Irishman--saying he was glad to see the latter perform his duty so faithfully. When they were well refreshed and ready for the balance of the journey they took their departure, after arresting the host’s son. After that this farmer was not quite so loyal, nor had he such exalted views of a magistrate’s duty; moreover, he wished that he had saved that breakfast. The document upon which the arrests were founded set forth: “That (those enumerated) not having the fear of God in their hearts, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, and entirely withdrawing the love, and true and due obedience, which every subject of our said lady the Queen should, and of right ought to, bear towards our said present lady the Queen, and wickedly devising and intending to disturb the peace and public tranquillity of this Province ... on divers other days and times, with force and arms at the township of Eramosa, in the said district, unlawfully, maliciously and traitorously, did compass, imagine, and intend to bring and put our said lady the Queen to death.” In spite of efforts of judge and Crown, a jury took eight minutes to return a verdict of “Not guilty.” But in the meantime the building in which the prisoners were confined at Hamilton had been used by Government to store fifty kegs of gunpowder, protected by sand. Early in the morning the seven men, asleep in their two narrow cells, were roused to the fact that the tinder-wood building was on fire. They shouted until they were hoarse, pounded with all their strength, but failed to wake the sleeping guards. Exhausted, they threw themselves on the floor to await the horrible fate which seemed inevitable. But an alarm from without at last roused the guards, who at once set about saving the gunpowder, and gave no thought to the anxiety and terror of those within the cells. For long there was a popular idea that the fire was malicious incendiarism, but there appears to be no definite ground for such a belief.

To ensure safety, a night-watch was set on the Eramosa bridge, as well as at one other point. One night a son of the too well-fed Irish magistrate was on duty. It so happened that at the witching hour a Scotch miller came across the bridge with a wee drap in his ’ee--a strong, muscular fellow, and muscular in his language. His answer to whither was he going and what his errand, was, without preliminary words, to seize the guard by his coat collar and a convenient handful of his trousers, remove him from his path, and, with some oaths, declare that if interfered with he would pitch him into the river.

It did not take much to frighten either guard or pedestrian at such times. Not far from the Galt bridge an old Highlander, who was a bit of a character, successfully tried for a few “treats” from the regulars whom he saw one night in the cosy brightness of the village inn. He also made away with a regular’s red coat. Some of the home corps were on guard that night, and as in the clear atmosphere they saw him coming toward the bridge they guessed his double sin. They demanded his business and the countersign, and fired into the air. He fell flat, vowing he was killed, and never afterwards had he peace in the streets of Galt.

There are some ludicrous magistrate stories in all districts. As in the first days of Franco-Anglo-Canada it had not been thought requisite that officials should know both languages, so in these early provincial days it was not a _sine qua non_ that magistrates should read and write. A “dockyment” was brought before one, a blacksmith by trade. He sat down on his anvil to “execute,” looking ineffably wise while he held the paper head down. “But, your worship, the document is upside down,” said the humble bailiff. “By the virtue of my office, I hold it whichever way I d--- please,” said his worship, stamping his foot, and convinced he was as well in his wits as any man in Middlesex. On the other hand, one western bailiff never lost a chance to display his knowledge of whatever language, dead or living, he might opportunely happen to think. When questioned by his magistrate as to the non-appearance of an expected prisoner, the bailiff proudly replied, “Non est comeatibus, c’est in an awful mess, parceque cum swampibus.”

* * * * *

In Huron proper, while the people were devising means to secure recognition of what they deemed their rights locally, not one man rebel to his country was to be found; indeed, no one who knew his circumstances will apply that term even to the unfortunate Van Egmond. “Blame Van Egmond? I blame the Family Compact a devilish sight more than I blame him,” says one. Sir Francis Bond Head ought to be considered an authority, and he affirms the Queen to be the head of this Family. “And what are we going to fight for?” asked one western man, with his draft-slip in his hand. “Against Mackenzie? Never!--the only man who dared to speak for us--never!” These true reformers considered that they were most loyal to their Queen when loyal to her and themselves too, and the remembrance of the day which called them to arms carries with it a regretful thought for Van Egmond.

In Goderich the arms consisted mainly of pitchforks, scythes and pikes, the latter made for the occasion by George Vivian, of that place. Each had a cruel crosspiece, with all points sharpened, to be used either as bayonet or battle-axe. A few lucky warriors had flintlocks.

One great source of complaint was the class of firearms supplied. Some relics of one lot of “useless lumber” sent up under the charge of the present Mr. Justice Robertson’s father are still about the Goderich gaol, and the specimens extant show the complaint to have been a just one.

There was also “a plentiful crop of captains and colonels.” Drill was held in the large room at Read’s hotel, and the boys who looked on were much edified by such display of valour and clanking of metal. This regiment has been handed down to local fame as “The Invincibles,” “Huron’s True Blues,” “The Huron Braves” and “The Bloody Useless.” When the call to arms came all turned out with good-will, and the fact that lone fishermen, pigs and ponies proved to be their only visible enemies can cast no discredit on the valour of their intention. Their hardships were many, and the complaints heard few.

Somewhere on the lake border, where the juniper and tamarack made the best undergrowth, wandered Ryan, a fugitive from Gallows Hill, the man made famous by the death of Colonel Moodie. Many miseries were his until the opening of navigation, and by the time he was taken off by a friendly American schooner he was reduced to a skeleton.

It was on Christmas Day, in the rain, that Captain Hyndman and his followers set out for Walpole Island, a journey which meant the extreme of roughing it. Captain Gooding and his Rifles left on the 7th of January, and were fortunate in being able to return all together when their service was over; but those who were with Captain Luard at Navy Island had to get back just as their strength would allow. Captain Lizars and Lieutenant Bescoby took their men to Rattenbury’s Corners, where they spent most of the winter, thus being saved many hardships suffered by their townsmen. Edouard Van Egmond was a most unwilling volunteer, for his ill-advised father, brave soldier and good pioneer as he had been proved, was by that time with Mackenzie in Toronto. Edouard resisted the press; but his horses were pressed into service, and their young owner said that wherever they were he must follow. The Invincibles were evidently at liberty to display individual taste in uniform, and Major Pryor took his way to the frontier picturesque in blanket-coat, sugar-loaf toque and sword; nor was the line drawn at the combination of blanket-coat, epaulets and spurs. The regulars among them did not disdain to be gorgeous, too, and one tall, handsome Irishman looked particularly magnificent in a uniform specially procured from England. He was a truly warlike and awe-inspiring sight, and having served through the Spanish campaign, and at Waterloo, had the usual regular’s contempt for militia. His charge was the commissariat from Niagara to Hamilton and London, and on one occasion, at a certain point on the Governor’s Road, was challenged by a guard, Private McFadden. His Magnificence merely vouchsafed, “Get out of my way, you young whippersnapper!” disgust and indignation making a strong brogue stronger. McFadden lifted his musket and was just about to fire, when a mutual acquaintance opportunely arrived to save the regular from the volunteer.

Some of the distressing events which centred in the Windsor neighbourhood had a direct or indirect connection with Huron names. Peter Green, of Goderich, the garrison tailor, who lived in a house almost adjoining the barracks, with his family was shut up in it by the patriots, who intended to roast them to death. Green, a staunch Mason, but who nevertheless had given up his Goderich lodge through his distaste towards a brother Mason (Thomas Mercer Jones, the Huron exponent of the Family Compact), put his trust in Providence, and thrusting out his hand made a Masonic sign. He was understood by one of the enemy and allowed to leave his burning house. As he went he was carrying his youngest child; in spite of masonry a stab was made at his burden, which Green warded off at the expense of his own hand. Bad as matters were, his membership saved him and his from death. Ronald MacGregor and his family, who had moved from Goderich to Windsor in ’36, were burned out at the same time, escaping in their night-clothes.

When the Bloody Useless were at the front they saw no active service; but their sufferings were not inconsiderable. Some of them had quarters in a church, where the narrowness of the pews and benches and the scantiness of the blankets led to much discomfort. But the real hardship fell to those whose lot took them to some deserted Indian shanties where filth of all kinds and melted snow on a clay floor were poor inducements to rest. The snow shovelled out to the depth of a foot still left enough behind to be melted by the warmth of the wearied bodies, which, stretched side by side, were by morning held fast by the snow-water again frozen. The hearty, cheery spirit of Dunlop, who doubled the rations, was better than medicine, or even than his liberal allowance of grog. When they moped he would order them out for a march, leading them in his homespun checkered dress and Tam o’ Shanter, closely followed by the Fords (“the sons of Anak,” because they were all six feet six), the Youngs, the Annands, and other stalwart township pioneers, not forgetting some sailors who had been pressed into the service, each man shouldering a pike ten feet in length. “Ah me, what perils do environ the man that meddles with cold iron,” quoted the Doctor; “in the British army it was understood that the only use of a musket was supposed to be that it could carry a bayonet at the end of it.” But his own armament was chiefly that supplied by George Vivian. The Doctor’s hardy frame knew nothing of the sufferings of his men. On one occasion when he took a company of sixty from Bayfield, he expected to make Brewster’s Mills easily; but the men were half tired, and he appropriated for their rest two shanties by the way. Next day they went on to the Sable, but the men were completely done by the time Kettle Point (Ipperwash) was reached. Get on they must, as many as might; so the Doctor proposed, “All of you as are fit, come with me.” Of the sixty, twenty-six went on with him, and one survivor tells that that march was the hardest work he ever did; “but the Doctor stood it finely.” About the same time Dunlop and his men found themselves dependent for shelter on two women who had no comforts to offer such a company. Some of the men grumbled, but the Doctor asked for whiskey. The women showed him a barrel newly opened; whereupon he put a man in charge, and ordered horns all round. The hostesses were anxious to give a bed to the Doctor, but he would have nothing that his men had not. Calling to Jim Young to bring him a beech log, he disposed himself in his blanket on the floor; when the log came he put one end of his blanket over it for a pillow and slept soundly until morning. “Our fathers ... have lain full oft ... with a good round under their heads instead of a pillow. Pillows, said they, were thought meet only for women.”

The hopes and the fears, the occasional feasts and many involuntary fasts, hardened all consciences when a search for supplies was on hand. In these times even the future first sheriff of Huron did not consider house-breaking criminal nor a raid upon a potato-pit larceny. Once Colonel Hyndman and some others had three-weeks’ leave and started on their homeward trip by the lake-shore, some seventy-five miles at the least, and unnecessarily added to by a false calculation which caused them to retrace their steps and increase their already long walk by ten miles. Sergeant Healy was twice nearly lost on the way; first by falling in a creek, and afterwards through exposure to cold--for their tramp led them through a country covered with two feet of snow. Healy begged them to leave him to his fate, saying that although he was an old soldier, and had served his sovereign in all parts of the world for twenty-one years, he had never suffered as he was suffering then. Needless to say they did not desert him, and they got him to Goderich as best they could; but he served no more on the Canadian frontier.

The men were much interested in the droves of half-wild cattle and horses to be seen on both sides of the Detroit and St. Clair Rivers. The horses were so numerous that it is said strings of them could be seen each way as far as the eye could reach, and as late as ’46 fifty dollars would buy a good one. In various “Legends of the Detroit” many interesting stories are told of these hardy, clever little animals, the direct descendants of one of the most celebrated of the stock of 1665--the French horses called by the Indians the Moose Deer of Europe. The French river settlers cut their fodder in the summer, stacked it, and turned it over to the ponies in the winter for them to feed from at will. Water-holes in the ice were made for the wise little animals, and beyond these two items they received little attention from their owners. One of the Invincibles thus describes a raid on our men by the enemy:

“Skimmings, of Goderich, was on guard, and reported that he heard the rebels galloping through the bush. Young told him that that was an impossibility, as they would have to come from the opposite direction. Skimmings was sure he heard the tread and gallop, and was loaded to the muzzle to receive them. Presently a drove of ponies appeared, making for their water-holes--and there was another scare over, and Skimmings never heard the last of it.”

At Colonel Hyndman’s quarters on Walpole Island a challenge was given to three of these inoffensive Indian ponies, by a sentry who had an infirmity of stuttering. Fearing that he had not been understood, he repeated his challenge; and still once again, unwilling that any should perish through his poor speech. Determined to be merciful in spite of this contemptuous silence he called out the guard, who were some time in arriving at a knowledge of the matter, for between the sentry’s fright and his stutter he was unintelligible. The lanterns of the guard revealed the homeless trio, supplementing their scanty supper by picking up stray bits of fodder which lay about the camp.

Of the practical jokes most of them were played on officers, either by their subordinates or brother officers. Major Pryor was at Sarnia with Colonel Hyndman, and the latter was very anxious indeed to break the monotony of the times. His chance came one evening when there was exchange of sentries, and Pryor had gone off to spend a convivial hour. Hyndman gave very strict orders as to the enforcing of the password, and then waited results. Major Pryor staggered back to the line, very drunk indeed. When challenged he stuttered that he was the f-f-fellow’s major.

“I don’t care who you are--what’s the password?”

“Don’t know, b-b-but I’m your Major!”

“Into the guardhouse with you then, if you don’t know the pass,” and the major was ignominiously hurried off. When he got there he was clear enough to see that the men knew him.

“Very well, then,” said one; “if you give us an order on the Commissary for a gallon of grog we’ll let you go.”

“Give me a p-p-pen then,” said Pryor, “and you can have your g-g-grog.”

He duly wrote the order, which one of the men altered from one to two gallons, and was thereupon set at liberty.

There was little ceremony spent on the furnishing of the commissariat. When a beast was noticed by an officer it was decided that that animal must at once be annexed; but as far as can be learned now there was always a fair remuneration made to the owner. It was claimed by the rival messes that equal fairness was not observed in the distribution of a suddenly acquired dainty. Dunlop had become possessed of a sheep, and great was the rage of Pryor when it was found that the former had requisitioned for the whole animal, for they had all been living on pork for weeks. The Doctor could not resist such opportunity for jokes, and mutton _versus_ pork caused Pryor many an irritation. Nicknames, too, grew from the work and doings of ’37 as easily as they were coined by Dunlop at other times. “Toddy Tam” was the head of the Commissariat, and Robert Young, of Glasgow, who was butcher to the Huron militia, was in consequence called Killit-and-Curit. Thereafter he was best known as Killie Young.

A grand dinner had been the cause of Major Pryor’s guard-house experience. A baker and a butcher had been sent to ransack the countryside for provisions for it, and extraordinary success had crowned their efforts. Colonel Hyndman asked “Toddy Tam” not to serve the major with any of the new-gotten delicacies until he, Hyndman, had entertained his fellow-officers at a dinner. And such a dinner, to men who had been half starved! Mutton and turkey boiled and roast, fowls, and pastry of all sorts and descriptions. “Good God, Hyndman!” exclaimed Pryor, “where did you get all that?”

Hyndman gravely replied that these were his rations. Toddy Tam arrived at the head of the stairway just in time to hear Pryor heaping abuse upon him, saying that “that d---- fellow, the Commissary, had served _him_ with nothing but salt pork ever since he came to Sarnia.” The irate major just then caught sight of the offender, and would have thrown him down the stairway but for the interference of Captains Gooding and Lizars. Careful management and pre-arrangement on the part of his tormentors lodged the gallant and stuttering major in guard-house.

On another occasion, when Hyndman was in advance of Pryor by a day’s march, the former halted his men for rest at Mrs. Westlake’s, where comforts and food were in plenty. Reckoning on the major’s usual blustering manner to bear him out, Colonel Hyndman advised Mrs. Westlake that Major Pryor would arrive next day, and that she had best be on her guard. When Pryor and his men arrived he at once ordered this and shouted for that, desiring the household to bring him every thing at once. To his amazement in marched Mrs. Westlake, a huge pistol in her hand, who without more ado began the work of converting a bully into the most civil and astonished of officers. But with all his faults of manner Pryor had his good points, and only two days previous to this had sent home his man-servant and horses, determined to march with his men and share their hardships.