Chapter XI: Part 11

Doctor Dunlop, “who commanded six hundred and fifty fine fellows at the front,” was much distressed at the lack of money to pay his men. He was advised that a line of express horses had been established between London and Sarnia, and he accordingly detailed Captain Kydd as messenger with a despatch to Colonel John Askin. Captain Kydd tried to evade the commission, as his regimentals were in no trim for appearance at headquarters. His brown moleskin shooting-jacket had seen three sousings in the Maitland, besides much other hard usage as pillow or blanket on mud floors; his Black Hawk cap was too small and sat awkwardly on his head, and the rest of his attire was in keeping. However, he went. After many adventures he reached a station where a retired naval officer and his young and pretty wife were domiciled in a log hut some eight feet high, which was roofed with bass-wood troughs and contained but one room. The kitchen was a bark shanty, a few feet away. There were no signs of cattle about, but the frequent ringing of a cow-bell gave the impression that one must be stabled in the kitchen. Not so, however. A rope connected the “parlour” with the second building, the bell in use being an old cow-bell, the ringing of which was the work of the pretty young wife, who in her own apartment tried, poor soul, to forget her surroundings by keeping up what semblance she could of her former state. The bush in those days was full of such anomalies. When the express equine was brought to the door he had neither saddle nor bridle, a hair halter, perhaps provided by his own tail, his only garnishing. Nothing but the bell-rope could be found to assist in improvising a harness. Captain Kydd had not the heart to deprive the lady of that, and he continued his journey caparisoned with hair halter alone. His tale of danger and discomfort, through what seemed an interminable swamp, can well be believed,--wet, cold and hungry, without sight of another soul until he reached the next station, where he was received and kindly treated by the women relatives of our own Edward Blake. These ladies looked at the half-drowned horse and mud-bespattered man; and full of pity for a supposed backwoodsman in dire distress, were ready to offer him their best hospitality. When he put into their hands his passport as “Captain Kydd of the First Hurons, abroad on special service,” they did not attempt to disguise their amusement, but laughed long and heartily. After a rest of an hour or two, a bath, a rubbing down which deprived him of his coat of mud, and a hearty appreciation from himself and his beast of the good fare set before them, he was ready to pursue his journey. At length London was reached, and the precious despatch put into Colonel Askin’s hands--but with no result, for there was neither official money nor credit. Instead of coin, Colonel Askin gave the messenger a packet addressed to Captain James Strachan, Military Secretary at Government House, Toronto. In vain did Kydd bring forward his coat and Black Hawk cap as sufficient reason for not undertaking a further trip; nor yet were his sufferings from hunger and fatigue on his recent journey allowed to stand in the way of his undergoing fresh distress. The best mode of conveyance obtainable was a common farm-waggon, in which he made his way at a foot pace. He met many people en route, most of them as shabby as himself, and all talking war to the knife. He arrived in Toronto late at night on the third day, but waited until morning to present his despatches at Government House. There the much befogged Secretary not unreasonably looked with disdain at the coat and cap of the special messenger; the despatch was taken within for Sir Francis’ perusal, with the result that another packet, of large size and said to contain the necessary money, was put into Captain Kydd’s hands, and an order given him to return to London by express. Express meant a dirty farm-sleigh with a torn canvas cover. His only travelling companion was a Brant Indian returning to the Reserve, an intelligent, well-educated man and a most pleasant companion. Together they were upset from the sleigh, and together they righted it and its sail-like cover, to resume the weary journey. Upon presentation to Colonel Askin, the important-looking packet was found to be worthless, for the document bore no signature. Captain Kydd was given his original Rosinante, with the same hair halter, and sent back to Sarnia, while another special messenger was despatched to Toronto for the necessary signatures.

The despatch and its bearer had variations. When Black Willie Wallace, of Dunlop’s Scouts, was sent with one from Clinton to Goderich it took nine days to travel the twelve miles and pass the various taverns on the way. The importance of the despatch entered even the childish mind, and one small daughter, whose father was a bearer, cried out as the latter rode up to the gate in full regimentals, “Here’s father with another dampatch.” Always warlike and politicians, these small babes sometimes dealt unpleasant truths to the untrue. One Tory atom when questioned “Where’s your father?” replied, “Father gone to fight the dirty rebels, and brother Dan’el gone to fight the dirty rebels, too.”

Colonel Dunlop swore not a little when Kydd reported himself empty-handed, but tried to keep up his own hopes as well as those of his men. Weeks and months went by, and no money came; privations were great, and the mental trial was added of the knowledge of farms at home going to ruin, families unprovided for, and no prospect for the future. In March the order for return came; but there was no word of any money. The companies were told off for the homeward trip, one day apart, and the record is of a terrible journey in the broken March weather, with roads at their very worst. Dunlop remained behind with others of the officers, for, as he wrote Government in terms not to be mistaken, he had become personally liable to the local stores for clothing and necessaries, and would not leave the place with such indebtedness unpaid.

“Glory is not a very productive appanage, it is true, but in the absence of everything else it is better than nothing”--but these impoverished lads had little or no glory, and they returned without having seen what was technically known as active service. Dunlop’s illustration of the _ne plus ultra_ of bad pay was Waterloo, where each private there performed the hardest day’s work ever done for a shilling. Now he thought the brave Hurons in a still worse plight. By the time pay day did arrive they were not few who expressed the opinion that the Canadian rebellion was due to the machinations of a “parcel of poor rogues and a few, a very few, rich fools, one party deserving accommodation in the penitentiary and the other lodgings in bedlam.” Dunlop did not allow himself such free speech in regard to the policy of the Colonial Office, which let numbers be brought to the scaffold or to the foot of it; but he used no circumspection in words when he dealt with local mismanagement.

“As syllabubs without a head,
As jokes not laughed at when they’re said,
As needles used without a thread,
Such are Bachelors,”

says an old song. Now Tiger Dunlop might have said, “And when I fell into some fits of love I was soon cured.” But bachelor as he was, the well-springs of fraternal love were not dried up in him; nor were his syllabubs wont to be without a head, nor his jokes unlaughed at. When he spoke others listened, and his dissatisfaction ended in his resignation, upon which he addressed the following letter to his brave Hurons:

“COMRADES,--When I resigned the command of the St. Clair frontier in March last I endeavoured to express to you in my farewell Order my gratitude for the generous confidence you had reposed in me, and my thanks for the steady soldier-like conduct with which you had borne every privation and met every difficulty. I have now to explain to you the reason why I voluntarily abandoned a situation in every respect gratifying to my feelings as the honourable command I then held.

“From the day that I resigned the command to the present hour I have, at great expense and total neglect of my own personal affairs, been travelling from one commissariat station to another in order to get something like justice done you. To the superior military officers my best thanks are due--Sir John Colborne, Sir F. B. Head, and latterly Sir G. Arthur, Colonel Foster, and our immediate commanding officer, the Hon. Colonel Maitland, have treated me with the greatest kindness and you with the greatest consideration. From men of their rank we might possibly have submitted to a little hauteur; on the contrary we have met with the most courteous condescension. The Commissariat, on the other hand, men infinitely inferior to many of us in birth, rank, and education, have treated us with the most overweening arrogance and the most cruel neglect. They have never personally insulted me, for I am six feet high and proportionately broad across the shoulders; but the poor farmers have to a man complained to me of their treatment by these

_Very magnificent three-tailed Bashaws_

of Beef and Biscuit. I grudge none of the labour I have spent, nor any of the pecuniary sacrifices I have made in your service. My life and my property are my country’s, and I am willing cheerfully to lay either or both down when my Sovereign may require them, but my honour is unalienably my own, and I cannot submit to be made, as I lately unwittingly have been, the instrument of the most cruel and grinding oppression, to snatch, without remuneration, his pittance from the peasant or the bread from his children’s mouths. I have therefore submitted my resignation, but with no intention of leaving you; I shall stand with you in all danger, shoulder to shoulder, but it shall be in the ranks.

“I have to warn you not to judge of a government by the meanest of its servants, nor let the upstart insolence of a body so contemptible alienate your affections from your Queen and country; the people of England are both liberal and just, and were your case fairly represented to them there is not the slightest doubt immediate steps would be taken to redress your grievances. The Queen, like other people, has dirty work to do, and must have dirty fellows do it. The royal chimney-sweepers who exercise their professional functions in Buckingham Palace and St. James’s may be very pleasant fellows in their way, but I doubt much if they are the kind of people that either you or I would borrow money to drink with, as Shakespeare’s fat Knight says.

“Some little excuse must be had for the poor fellows after all. That the Commissariat are ‘saucy dogs’ we all must allow, have felt it; but that they are not too saucy to eat dirty puddings we know, for cursed dirty puddings they are obliged to bolt, without even daring to make a wry face at them. Witness the correspondence which the House of Assembly last winter elicited between the arrogant, insolent, empty-headed coxcomb at the head of that department and the Commissaries at Toronto and Penetanguishene. To this the poor devils are obliged to submit for their piece of silver or morsel of bread. It is natural, therefore, that the people who have studied so long in the school of arrogant ill-breeding should be anxious to exhibit the proficiency they have attained when their turn comes; and it is possible they may suppose that a Canadian yeoman, who is afraid of losing all that has been taken from him by offending their High Mightinesses, may for a time submit to it.

“A broken head or two might remove this delusion and convince them that _a man is still a man_ though clad in a homespun coat, and that to get rid of their redundant bile safely they must make it go as hereditary property does by law, downwards, and alight on the heads of clerks and issuers, who, living in the hope of one day having it in their power to abuse their inferiors, will probably submit with more equanimity.

“In applying to the British Parliament for redress, I give you warning that the Commissariat is the most powerful body you can well attack. The Duke of Wellington and Lord Grey, Lord Brougham and Lord Lyndhurst, Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Daniel O’Connell may talk, and all, when in their turn of power, have provided for the sons of faithful butlers and respectable valets in the Commissariat--a department particularly favourable for the offspring of the lower orders (the pay being good and the work little or nothing), the attainments necessary for its duties being easily acquired in any parish school, they being comprised in writing a legible hand and a tolerable acquaintance with the first four rules of arithmetic. The experiment, however, is well worth trying, and I trust will be successful.

“With best wishes for your prosperity and hope that you may henceforward, under the protecting arm of a just Government, cultivate your fields in peace, I subscribe myself, my comrades and fellow-soldiers,

“W. DUNLOP,

“_Your late Colonel,
“Commanding the St. Clair Frontier_.”

This letter found its way into all the provincial journals, and made no little talk. The Kingston _Whig_ says, “Among many other endearing epithets he calls Mr. Commissary-General Routh an empty-headed, arrogant, insolent coxcomb. Now the gallant ex-Colonel, according to his own confession, stands six feet high and is proportionately broad across the shoulders, and Mr. Commissary is an aged and feeble man, altogether past the prime of life; would a duel therefore be fair between the parties? We think not; and yet according to the absurd notions of modern honour what else can Mr. Commissary do than fight, unless, indeed, one of his younger and subordinate officers equally insulted by the gallant ex-Colonel takes up the cudgels in his own and his chief’s behalf.” But there was no duel. Dunlop had a sovereign contempt for what he called a lobster-coated puppy, and took his grievances straight to Colonel Maitland, Commandant at London. There are always wheels within wheels. The Doctor’s requisitions for food and drink had been on a generous scale; an assistant commissary had peremptorily brought things under different conditions, with an amount of unnecessary red tape which aggravated the Doctor beyond endurance. A stop was put to the whiskey _in toto_, not on temperance but on military principles, and that he could not thole. He reached London at night. Next morning, instead of reporting himself in an ordinary way, he arrived at morning parade of the 32nd, and there accosted the Colonel on horseback. Dressed in his usual homespun shepherd’s plaid and blue bonnet, the Doctor is reported to have delivered himself thus:

“Good-mornin’ to ye, Maitland. Hoo air ye this mornin’?’

“Why, Dunlop, is this you?”

“Yes, ’tis I myself. I’ve just come over from Port Sarnia to lay a wee mather before ye. I was in command of the volunteers from my own neighbourhood, farmers and farmers’ sons, who are in the habit of being well fed and well found in their ain hames, and I generally supplied them in all they needed at Sarnia, and tried to make things comfortable for them by givin’ them plenty to eat and plenty to drink; when a Commissary fellow by the name of Robinson came there, took the mather in hand, cut off pairt o’ the supplies and disregarded my orders when I gave requisitions. Now, Maitland, I am here an old army officer, and I know what it is to feed men, and I’ve come to lay this mather before you that you may set it right, because I’ve never been in the habit, and I never will be subjected, to take my orders from a dom pork-barrel.” Upon which the Colonel nearly fell off his horse. He knew the Doctor, and enjoyed the originality of the whole complaint.

Why should the good Tiger’s memory be too heavily assailed for his fondness and capacity for liquids. Maréchal Saxe, in his hale youth, could toss off a gallon of wine at a draught; and when Wolfe’s men reached the crest of the hill he had grog served out to them, while he spoke kind and encouraging words after their terrible climb. Why should not Goderich and the Tiger appear in these tales oscillating between history and myth? It was called a Goderich custom to conceal the glass in the hand while the liquid was poured in; but Whiskey Read, teamster and trader, earned his sobriquet because his load to Goderich was so many barrels of the terrible liquid.

In time Dunlop was advised that ten thousand dollars lay to his credit at the Bank of Upper Canada in Amherstburg. Thus were unnecessary miles added to a journey already delayed and cruelly long. Doctor and aides made their way there--that place renowned for loyalty, rattle-snakes and turkeys--astonishing all Windsor on his way through it by the display of a half-crown piece which had turned out from some forgotten pocket corner. So much specie had not been seen there for a long time; they knew no money but the wild cat shin-plaster. From Windsor they proceeded by water; and after further adventures, immersions and escapes, there was the final discovery of Jamie Dougall in a little low-ceilinged shop, manager of the Bank of Upper Canada. But there was no money yet for Huron, and they must wait some days for its possible arrival. So, with as much patience as might be, they established themselves at Bullock’s Hotel, and after five days’ waiting the money did arrive. The Doctor in the meantime had intended to divert an hour by calling upon the officers at Fort Malden; but the dress suit of claret-coloured cloth, the coat tails lined with pink silk, with which he had provided himself, was now all too small, and when arrayed in it he looked and felt so much like the letter T, that he called lustily, “Kydd, Kydd, come and let me out.” In his dirty homespun and Tam the visit had to be made, and the straight-jacket was never seen again.

On leaving the village with their precious load a sudden panic took the person to whose special keeping the sum had been given, and at the moment of departure he could nowhere be found. The Doctor could only suppose that both man and money had been kidnapped, and, as consolation, had recourse to horns with every friend he met. And the Doctor’s friends were many, and the horns were potent. At length Doctor, money and aides were all got together and a start was made for Sarnia. Then followed further adventures, impassable roads, frequent halts and scanty fare. Just as they were watching the manœuvres of the migrating fish, and admiring the dexterous way in which they helped their passage by hugging the shore, they came upon an old walnut dug-out, abandoned on account of a crack in its side. The bullion convoy was at this time enjoying the hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. Sutherland, from whom they procured rags instead of oakum, and with pitch made a good job of the canoe. Mrs. Sutherland provided them with what she called a week’s supply of provisions, and following the example of the fish they began their coasting journey. The provisions turned out to be ample for double the time, fortunately for them, for it took them all of that to reach the brave Huron First, by then all at home and anxiously awaiting the pay so dearly earned on the frontier. At Sarnia the convoy debarked to pay outstanding dues. At Point Edward there was a further delay, where the rapids proved a barrier. Ben Young was left in the boat to fend it from the shore, while the Doctor, Captain Kydd and James Young, pulling on a stout rope, did tow work. No sooner were the rapids safely passed than an accumulation of half-rotten ice stopped the way, honeycombed and soft in the centre--“for all the world,” as the Doctor said, “like a woman’s baking of tea-tarts, with a spoonful of jelly in the middle.” They beached the boat as best they could, and soon had a roaring fire of drift-wood, the warmth of which made them forget many discomforts. This last delay was too much for the Doctor’s patience, and by morning it was found that he had struck off on his way home alone--no doubt feeling independent when on his feet in these pathless woods, even in the winter. James Young was sent after him, and the other three, with the money in their keeping, stuck by the canoe. Fresh accumulations of ice, storms, a rescue by a party of five or six men off Kettle Point, were next in the list of adventure, until, the water journey becoming impossible, they camped on shore and turned inland for help, the man with the money being left with the unhappy canoe and its load of their united belongings. A poor enough kit it was--dirty blankets and underwear. Mr. Sayers and his two sons entertained them with their best, and helped shoulder the load as far as Bayfield. There another stop was made; and the weary five, with their ten thousand dollars’ worth of pay money, reached Goderich the following night. The Companies’ pay-lists were then compared, checked off, and approved by the Commanding Officer, and many hearts were made glad after another fortnight had been spent in settling all matters of detail.

Such delays and martyrdoms to red-tapeism read not unlike the record of the Crimean campaign. It is not unnatural that Captain Strachan, the Military Secretary, should be spoken of with severity by such as remember those days and hand down the tale, as he was the middleman through whom much was suffered.

Meantime, although Goderich had been written of “as more completely out of the world than any spot which it has been attempted to settle,” it found it incompatible with dignity and safety to be without a Home Guard. In the townships there was another class of home guard; for the old men and the lame, or lads under sixteen, were left in charge to cut the wood, water cattle and attend to the women’s chores. This help, such as it was, had to be spread over a large area, one man, lame or not, having to attend to several farms.

The remembrance of the Home Guard’s duty is that it was a peaceful performance, a sinecure as far as aggression or resistance went. Although Goderich was credited by several governors and military commanders as being a capital natural vantage for defence, the fortification of the Baron’s Hill never went on, for it was estimated the point was too far removed from the rest of the world ever to be attacked.

A Detroit newspaper of June 30th, ’38, tells how “on the night of Tuesday last some thirty of these heroes (patriots) stole a sloop and cruised to Goderich, in Canada. There they plundered the stores of everything valuable and came off. The steamboat _Patriot_ was immediately manned and sent in pursuit of them, and after a long chase found them in our waters. The persons on board the sloop were all armed, but being--as they are--a miserable lot of cowards, they ran the sloop on to the land, and everyone on board, with the exception of one man, made their escape. The sloop was captured and brought down in tow to this place.” Luckily, by July 12th the Detroit paper can say further, “The steamboat _Governor Marcy_, under command of Captain Jephson, has succeeded in capturing eight of the pirates who robbed the storehouses at Goderich, U. C. They were brought down from the St. Clair a week since, and on their arrival were taken before the U. S. judge. Four were discharged for want of sufficient evidence...; two were held to bail.... Since that time three others have been brought down ... and convicted. From the present appearance in this quarter, I am now of the opinion that the enlightened portion of the citizens of this section of the country have seen the error of their ways, and are now determined to set their faces against the Patriots. They find that the ‘Patriots’ are an unspeakable set of vagabonds, and that no dependence can be placed in them--a very wise conclusion, for I assure you that a more miserable set of beings never existed in any country. The commander-in-chief of the force in this section of the frontier I have been shown; and met him in a public bar-room. He stands five feet four inches in his shoes--that is, when he is fortunate enough to have a pair that can be so called--not lacking in impudence by any means, and a miserable, drunken vagabond, as his appearance plainly indicates.” This was Vreeland, who bore the unsavoury reputation of being “a Judas and a traitor.” He was found guilty of violation of the neutrality laws, and was sentenced by Judge Wilkins to one year’s imprisonment and a fine of $1,000.

Of his companion, Dr. McKinley, an unflattering silhouette is given by the Detroit editor, “The complete wreck of all that once constituted a man.” Also, “The Patriot force does not amount to anything like that number (one thousand), besides which they have not courage enough to cross the line.” The Indians took not a little pleasure in keeping these marauders on their own shore, and one of the former gives a spirited account of how “the savages drove the unfortunate fellows over again” from the St. Clair mission; he said they had to watch all night and sleep all day, wear feathers and tomahawks, “and if the pirates do not soon mend their ways the red-men will have to dress themselves so that the invaders will fall dead with fright, even before hearing the war-whoop and yells. We are in fear we shall get as savage as our fathers were in all the wars under the British flag.” Changed times these from those of the Indian proverb, “We will try the hatchet of our forefathers on the English, to see if it cuts well.”

Deborahs of ’37.

“_Although our last toast, gentlemen,--Place aux dames, ‘The hand that rocks the cradle guides the State.’_”

“‘_Madame! Madame Cornelia, you are not worthy of the name you bear._’

“‘_Sir, we do not live in the times of the Gracchi; I am not a Roman matron._’

“_In truth, the poor lady was nothing more nor less than a good, tender mother and excellent wife, not very interesting, perhaps, to philosophers, but very acceptable in the eyes of heaven._”

During the Seven Years’ War the only tillers to be seen in the Prussian fields were women. Likewise, in 1812, it was a common sight in Upper Canada to see women at the plough in place of absent husbands and brothers. Small wonder, then, that the mothers of 1812, and the daughters to whom they gave birth under such circumstances, were what they were in ’37.

Small wonder, too, that their neighbours across the line, who were kin and should have been friends, continued obnoxious to them when the representatives of the Stars and Stripes were such men as Theller and Sutherland. Yet, allowing for all provocation, the period of first dentition in the Canadian Infant was unusually squally; full of whims, shy fits, small fisticuffs and wailings.

Like that pattern of all good housewives described by the prudent mother of King Lemuel, it could be said of the immigrant’s wife, “She layeth her hand to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff; she seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands; she looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” And when Madame de Léry was presented at the Court of George III. her beauty forced the monarch to say, “If such are all my new Canadian subjects I have indeed made a conquest.”

The women of ’37 combined all these virtues with a few heroic ones. From the dark days of civil dissensions, when Canadians, like their sisters of Deborah’s time, saw their husbands obliged to travel by the by-paths because the high roads seemed to each to be occupied by his foes,

“A company of ghosts steal out
And join their voiceless sobs and cries.”

And there is laughter, too; for when she forgot for a moment to cry--her tears dropping into her teacup--Deborah did not disdain to see the humorous side of affairs. If the survivor be the fittest, then Place aux dames of the Tory stripe.

“Nay, we would in the title glory,
For every honest man’s a Tory,”

is the burden of their song. It is a song which loses half its thrill without the pointed reply, the little electric sparkles which run through it. Those who have furnished the bulk of the following pages shall tell their own stories:

“I am just that kind of Tory that the only time I went to the United States I put Canadian earth in my shoes, so that I might not walk on Yankee soil.

“I do indeed remember ’37 and Mackenzie, and how angry we all were that he escaped in a woman’s clothes. ‘He need not have cheated the authorities by putting on _our_ clothing,’ we said; it was hard to forgive him that.

“My father had a logic of his own. ‘Show me a Reformer,’ he used to say, ‘and I’ll show you a Radical; show me a Radical, and I’ll show you a rebel; show me a rebel, and I’ll show you a traitor to his country and his Queen; and a man who is untrue to his Queen is untrue to his God.’ He always declared he could smell a Radical in the next concession. A sword on one side of his bed and a gun on the other, and it was death to anyone who touched either. He always called my mother madame. ‘Madame, do you remember so and so?’ ‘Madame, is dinner ready?’ He was a volunteer in 1812, and, like many other loyal-hearted men, had to leave wife and family to look after themselves as best they might. He took part in all the chief battles then, and often was away for a month at a time. It was during one of these absences that McArthur’s freebooters, infamous marauders, plundered the country, pretending they were a branch of the United States army. When they got to our house they first of all removed a baking of bread, taking off the oven doors to do so; then they emptied the feather-beds on the brush-heap, and filled the ticks with cornstalks for fodder; they took our best blankets to cover their horses, and stole the silverware and valuables. They then destroyed what they could not carry away; one, more infamous than the rest, hurled a tomahawk through a large and valuable mirror. Some time afterwards, a Loyalist, when passing Colonel Talbot’s, saw a little copper tea-kettle hanging in a tree and a silver spoon with it, and Colonel Talbot recognized the crest on the spoon--a lamb encircled with a wreath--and the things were returned. My mother had buried what she could--her own clothes and whatever she could manage to secrete--and put brush over the place, and anything not lucky enough to be buried was taken. My father’s sister was alone when the marauders reached her house, so she called as loudly as she could, ‘John, Joe, Dick, all of you, make haste down--here they are!’ as if she was just waiting for them. She was a very resolute woman. Then she took down an old musket that always hung on two wooden hooks, rested it on the window-sill and fired at random; but random happened to be a good mark. The leader of the gang was at that moment riding towards the window, and the charge nearly carried off his horse’s leg; the animal fell, and remained there till it died. Then the whole party of these moss-troopers, who were alarmed as much by her shouts as by the shot, thought they had to encounter a number of men in the house, and made off as fast as they could. This was the time that Colonel Burwell’s place was burned and that Colonel Talbot made such a narrow escape from the same party. Colonel Burwell was ill with fever and ague; they took him prisoner and sent him to Chilicothe, where they left for him some time. They burnt his house, but his wife, after sending a message to Colonel Talbot to advise him of their coming, made her escape on her Indian pony. The marauders were all masked. She had recognized the leader, an American from across the border at Fort Erie, where she was born. She kept him interested while her messenger was on his way to Colonel Talbot--no new kind of work for Mrs. Burwell; in her old home she had had a similar experience, during which a small brother had improved the opportunity of the soldiers’ absence, while they ransacked the house, to make a visit to their stacked muskets, take a dipper and fill up every muzzle with water. When Mrs. Burwell arrived at our house, my mother dug up some of her wardrobe, and as the visitor often said afterwards, ‘Whatever should I have done if you had not given me something to wear!’ She remained with us till the next day, and Colonel Talbot in the meantime was lucky enough to look like a shepherd or labourer in his homespun smock. He was about to milk his cows, and would have made a queer figure to grace a triumph. The marauders had among them some Indians and scouts who figured at Tecumseh’s last battle, and an Indian was the first to enter on the scene. ‘You an officer?’ he said to Captain Patterson, Talbot’s friend and neighbor. ‘Oh, yes, big officer--captain.’ But this answer did not divert suspicion, and looking towards the ravine to which Colonel Talbot was directing his steps, the Indian continued, ‘Who that yonder--he big officer, too?’ ‘No, no,’ said Captain Patterson, ‘he is only the man who tends the sheep.’ Notwithstanding this assurance and the appearance which bore it out, two guns were levelled at the retreating figure. Twice they tried to cover him, but each time were diverted by the assurance repeated. The Colonel dropped into the ravine, and their chance was gone. They burned the mill, they plundered Castle Malahide, in the booty took some valuable horses, and they drove off the cattle; but two quart pots of gold and the plate, snug under the front wing of the house, escaped.

“The daughters of Joris Janson Rappelje went through much the same kind of thing. The father, a descendant of a Huguenot, had come here in 1810 with a detailed account of the family farming life, how the Dutch Governor of the New Netherlands had given a silver spoon to Sarah Rappelje, the first white child born in the colony--1635--and many other items of family interest, closely written in a fat manuscript volume. His American experiences had been stirring ones; at Lundy’s Lane it was no figure of speech to say they waded ankle deep in blood, and yet everybody said that the worst scourge of all was the raid of this band of McArthur’s marauders. They were one thousand strong, mounted, and unfortunately the camp was pitched at the Rappelje farm, where St. Andrew’s Market in St. Thomas now is. By night-time the place was in a glow of light from the fence-rails burning in heaps, the shadows of the overtopping trees making gloom above and beyond. By morning Rappelje’s sheep were all slaughtered, crops destroyed and the crib emptied of the corn. When Colonel Talbot tried to hide his valuables he gave Mrs. Rappelje a specially precious box, which was to be guarded at all hazards. It had so far been underneath a bed, a safe enough hiding in ordinary times, but she now took it out and put it between the beehives, sure that her lady bees would make good guards. Her young daughter Aletta would have fought the raiders herself had she been allowed, but she had to content herself by telling the commander that he was a thief and a scoundrel.[5]

“When the news of the uprising of ’37 reached us my father was off again, and my brothers too. One of the boys took down the big poker from the fireplace, the only weapon he could find, and I cried out to him by way of encouragement, ‘Mind you don’t get shot in the _back_!’ I and another girl, Margaret Caughill, sat up all night running bullets, and we had an apronful in the morning. I turned the grindstone, too, for one of the officers to sharpen his sword.

“It so happened that Dr. John Rolph was at my father’s place for three months. He poisoned the minds of a great many.”

In the house of a high Tory, who could smell a Radical in the next concession, the seditious doctor seemed to enjoy himself and showed a particular fondness for the blood-thirsty little Tory maid. “Come here, my fair child,” he would say, and when wanted and not to be found her mother would remark, “Oh, I suppose she is on Dr. Rolph’s knee.” She got at his quicksilver once, divided it with her finger to make it run, investigated the mysteries of his big watch, and helped him eat the johnnycake which he insisted her mother should bake in the ashes. The flaxen-haired, blue-eyed damsel was danced up and down by the light of the big fire--

“Send them back to Yankeeland
To hoeing of their corn,
And we will eat a johnnycake
While it is good and warm,”

is the song associated with the man of whom his best biographer records there was no such thing as self-abandonment, never giving himself to frolicsomeness or fun. It is almost a relief to find him in this out-of-the-way corner of the wilderness in such homely and off-guard actions. “What do you think this little one wants--she wants my money-bags,” and up she was on his knee again to examine the leather money-belt where he kept his guineas.

“He once came to us for flour and lost his way after he left, got into a brush-heap where he had to remain all night, and was so tormented by mosquitoes that in a frenzy, to protect himself, he emptied the flour and drew the sack over his head. He presented himself at the breakfast table next morning--and my father said he never saw such a show as the man was when he reached the house,”--“covered, if not with glory, yet with meal.”

Another visitor, of very different calibre, was the famous Tiger Dunlop, who would ride the saucy child upon his massive shoulder--which, she said, ought to have a saddle. He pronounced his admiration of egg-nog as made under her father’s supervision, “Ah, your coo gives good milk!” There was the usual greed in this neighbourhood for the liquid which made the egg-nog so uncommonly good, and the expedients to get the desired article were sometimes ingenious. One toper, impecunious and resourceful, provided himself with a keg partitioned down the centre, each side seemingly tight; one contained water only. He would arrive at the general store with the water side half-full, get the whiskey side filled, and then say payment would be made on his next visit. If prompt payment were demanded he would wax indignant; “Well, if you won’t trust me, take your old whiskey.” Out would come the water cork and the water would gurgle into the whiskey barrel; the owner, showing outraged virtue, would then march home with the whiskey side comfortably full.

As to the oft-repeated slander that Methodist preachers were the root of disaffection, scattering the seed of gospel and rebellion together, these ultra-loyal ladies are dubious. One says, “It is seldom you find one of them a _real_ staunch Tory and a good man”--a remark, by the way, which admits of two meanings. Three loyal dames, one of them a foreigner, once upon a time attended a revival; no doubt the three minds were prejudiced as to the politics of the preacher. The latter finally came down the aisle, addressing his questions right and left: “And now, my good woman,” to the foreigner, “what has the Lord done for _you_?” “By Job alive,” said the lady, “I do not tell my family affairs to everybody!”

It is hard, even yet, to convince these dames of fixed feeling that good could come out of certain quarters. “They call them Reformers,--but what were they else? He” (a person above general suspicion) “may not have carried two heads in one hat, but he was not the _true thing_.”

“I would rather be killed by a good Tory bullet than be singed by rebel gunpowder,” said this fire-eating slip of a girl to a crying friend. “What are you crying for--because you have no more brothers to send?” “No, I’m afraid they’ll be brought back dead.” “_I_ don’t care, provided mine are not shot in the _back_.”

Of the said brothers, one was in a troop of cavalry and another met his death, as many did, through the sudden change from home comforts to campaigning. “Getting up out of a down bed and sleeping under waggons or on frozen ground with a carpet-bag for a pillow was a great change, and he died before he could be got home.”

But another brother seems to have kept his health and spirits in a marked degree. The absences of the husband and father were now as long and trying as they had been in 1812, and the mother, whose name was the good old-fashioned Betsy, gave voluble tokens of her grief. This boy imitated his father’s handwriting and wrote a long and sympathetic letter, ending, “Do the best you can, Betsy, I don’t expect to be back till spring.” She threw down the letter,--“If you don’t come back till then, you need not come home at all.” The boys were delighted, but the mother discovered the forgery, and the scribe suffered severely. It was a custom with the father to give his daughter a birthday present of a roast of beef, every added year marked by an added pound of meat. In those days spinsterhood was not as fashionable a state of life as nowadays, and the father waxed annoyed: “Now, my dear,” he said, when the roast tipped considerably more than twenty pounds, “if you are not gone off within the year I shall have to drive in the whole beast.”

Arnold somewhere says that according as the New or Old Testament takes hold of a nation, so do what he terms the religious humours in it differ. It would be hard to determine from the data procurable just what the influence in this case was. Some had anxious thoughts as to how things had “sped” and the division of spoil which old and new dispensations always allow as lawful. One old lady sent off her son with a blessing to join his corps, but called him back again to give him a large shawl. “Now, Willie, take this with you, and when you get to Toronto be sure to get it filled with the best Young Hyson tea. Don’t forget now, and bring the best. By the time you get there you’ll find plenty of it for the taking.”

An old farmer ascribed the degeneracy of the times not to influences broad as Arnold’s, but to the “flattery” understood in the difference of manner toward farmers’ wives. “When ’twere dame and porridge, it were rale good times; when ’twere mistress and broth, ’twere worser a great deal; but when it comes to be ma’am and soup, it be werry bad indeed,” and no wonder the country went to the dogs. He preferred the days when U. E. Loyalist ladies speared salmon with pitchforks. If dress had aught to do with it, the change there was great indeed. In the early days to which he alluded many a U. E. Loyalist belle had only one garment to her name, a deerskin slip, and men’s buckskin trousers sometimes brought a dollar and a half after twelve years’ wear; by ’37 the following is a description of an evening dress, thought worthy to be sent to Canada--“Gros royale black ground with flowing pattern, wide flounces and short tight sleeves, long gloves of _peau rosée_, English lace cap with pompous (?) roses, English lace handkerchief, black satin shoes, and one bracelet.” During the good old days so bemoaned by the farmer, one U. E. Loyalist girl unfortunately made a neighbourly visit where she saw the mysteries of the laundry for the first time. The lesson sank deep in her mind, and at the first opportunity after her return home, when the rest of the family had left her in undisturbed possession of the house, she made her maiden attempt as blanchiseuse on her own deerskin garment. But as this adaptation from Godiva laboured, the garment grew less and less. Any woman who has attempted to wash a glove wrung into a wisp can appreciate her horror. There was no Peeping Tom, but the sounds of the returning family precipitated her into the generous shadow of the potato-hole, whence she interviewed them--if, indeed, the attenuated bit of chamois was not the more eloquent of the two. I’ll find a thousand shifts to get away, has been written; alas, she could find not one. She was packed in a barrel and conveyed upon an ox-sled to a neighbour’s where clothes were more common, and the distressed and shiftless maiden could truly have said she was in her right mind when again clothed. The last of the English and the first of the Canadians were in some points uncommonly alike.

* * * * *

“In our house in my childhood everything was dated by 1812--things had importance only as they were affected by that year and whether they were ‘before’ or ‘after’. My father was through the whole of ’12 and was with Brock at the taking of Detroit; Brock gave him a horse and all trappings for it and himself, and I very well remember the bearskin holsters and the pistols--enormous pistols that we often shot off when we were little.

“General Hull came through our district when he was on his way to Detroit, and every house was searched for arms of any kind or description that could be made use of by the Americans. My father was away from home with our own troops, and my mother received the American officer who came to search our house. He staid an unconscionable time, and mentioned that my father was fighting his own best friends, the friends who came to offer us liberty. ‘Liberty,’ said my mother; ‘liberty indeed--we want no more than we have; we are happy and have good laws, but _your_ country is one of lawlessness.’ My little brother, who was very small and who thought that when Yankees were spoken of wild beast and fairy-book creatures were meant, quietly sidled up to the officer and felt his legs. ‘Why, mother, mother! The Yankees wear trousers just like papa!’

“All children had nightmarish notions about the Americans, but they rather enjoyed it all; saw the excitement and fuss, revelled in the occasional strange circumstances, and knew none of the dangers. Once there was a great scare about the Indians, they were coming to kill us and burn our goods, and many precautions were taken. A big hole was made in the ground in the woods and all our valuables were put in it, and to the same woods we children were taken to be left hidden there; we had some chairs and a few comforts, and we thought it great fun--a little disappointed when during the night it was decided there was no more cause for alarm, and we were taken home again.

“A Mrs. Perry, to whom I went to school, had two sons away fighting. One day some Indians arrived, several of them wearing extra long scalp-belts, and one had in his belt a scalp with long yellow hair. Mrs. Perry said she knew that was her son’s hair; and anyway the son was never heard of again, as far as I know.

“On the occasion that the officer came to search for arms his troop evidently thought he was staying a good while, for sometimes they would try to approach the house a little nearer, when he would go to the door and wave them back. On their tour through the country they burned every grist-mill, so that the people would be starved out, and then of course we had to pound our grain as best we could. My uncle had a grist-mill and a saw-mill. He also had a daughter of sixteen, a lovely girl. When they had demolished the grist-mill they turned their attention to the other, but the girl was determined to save it, and as fast as a man would set it alight in one place she would pour water on it, until at last they admired her courage and bravery so much that the officer in charge ordered a man to help her destroy everything which would mean the least danger from fire and that the saw-mill was to be let alone.

“My father was also all through ’37, and when the first troubles came and our streets were full of shouting mounted rebels he waited for no orders but got supplies on his own account, trusting that some day the authorities would repay him, and his regiment was equipped and sent off without delay; he was colonel of the 4th Middlesex. If I had had anything to do with those times there would have been no question of making prisoners--shoot the dogs and be done with it. What business had they coming over here to stir up peaceable people, first in 1812 and then in 1837. Father saw no real fighting in ’37, except that in connection with the taking of Theller and the _Anne_, but he was in Windsor at the time of the Hume tragedy. Hume was skinned, and they said they were going to make drumheads out of the skin. When the brigands left his body hanging on the posts they went to Prince’s place, cut the trees, destroyed the fences, and frightened Mrs. Prince out of her senses.

“I saw Sutherland and Theller when they passed through St. Thomas on their way to Toronto for trial. My father as Colonel was president of the court-martial, and at that time he received many threatening letters, scores of them, saying that if any American lives were taken he and all his race would be killed. He laughed at this, saying that they evidently knew very little about a court-martial, for as president he had really less to say than the youngest officer in the room.