Chapter XII: Part 12

“At the beginning of the troubles in St. Thomas the Loyalists one day took refuge in an upper room of a big building, thinking they were going to be surrounded by rebels below; they were surrounded, but I don’t remember that anything hostile was intended. One of those in the upper room threw an axe out of the window and it fell on a man’s head, splitting his face open, and he was carried home on a stretcher, covered with a white cloth. I suppose he died afterwards. My husband was away with the militia, and I was terrified at being left alone with a maid-servant and a servant boy. One day a lot of them came in front of the house, and furiously began to pull the palings of the fence down, one of them shouting, ‘A Tory lives here; we’ll not leave a stick for him to see! We’ll burn the house, too!’ A magistrate came along just then and caught the fellow by the throat, calling him a rebel, had him arrested, and the rest of them left my premises. I was afraid they would return to carry out their threat, and got a man to come and watch all night, but they did not reappear. A party of the rebels were somewhere near, and our men wanted to catch them, but we were poorly supplied with ammunition. I was in a shop and heard the proprietor of it talking to another man, lamenting the lack of bullets, so I said, ‘Give me the moulds, and give me all the lead you have, and to-morrow you shall have all the bullets you can carry.’ So they did, and I and my woman-servant sat up the whole of that night melting lead and running bullets, and when the men came for them next day there was nothing too much for them to say, and they went away cheering me. The thing got into the American papers, which said that even the Canadian ladies were so earnest in the war that they sat up all night running bullets. When my servant and I were making them we had two moulds, one cooling while we filled the other. After the bullets were emptied into the cold water of course they were not smooth, and we each had a knife to cut off the part adhering; so there we sat in silence that whole night, filling and cutting, the silly maid weeping steadily. She was a young Scotch girl just out, and she cried all through the night as she worked. I gave the men their balls, saying, ‘Every bullet should find a billet,’ but they did not catch their party of rebels.

“Talbot’s likeness to William IV. was specially commented on when someone in the neighbourhood received an English paper with William’s picture in it. Talbot might have sat for the portrait. His usual dinner was soup, always soup, a plain joint, usually leg of mutton, vegetables, pancakes--I never saw anything but pancakes by way of a course to follow the meats at any of the many times I was there--and the best port wine that ever was brought into Canada. He imported it for himself direct from the manufacturers, and often half of it was abstracted on the way. He was not the boor he was painted, but it is certain he could be fascinating. I dined there often, and he was a perfect host, always choosing after-dinner topics which he thought would be suited to the interests of his guests. For instance, one evening he told me much about his mother and sister, and many of the strange and interesting things his sister’s continental life opened to her. He also explained that same evening how ladies of fashion hire court dresses made in Paris, great news to us Canadians. From another man I heard that this sister, who had taken vows of celibacy, Colonel Talbot said, but not vows to relinquish the world, was a political spy in the pay of the French Government and the Spanish Government. The story accounted for her regular six months’ residence in Paris and the same in Madrid; but she must have been clever to be able to serve two such governments, the antagonist this six months of the one she had been spying for in the previous six.

“Once when I was dining there he talked of his mother and her life at Malahide Castle, and how she managed the servants. There were plenty of cows and many servants, but no butter. She asked why, and was told that the cows were bewitched, and that the butter would not come. The lady was equal to the emergency, and said that she gave them just one week to get the cows unbewitched, and if there was not plenty of the best butter forthcoming by that time the whole troop of servants would be replaced by others. The butter soon came and was of the best.

“The mother was Roman Catholic and the father a Protestant, the family to be divided in the way of the sons following the father and the daughters the mother. Colonel Talbot was nothing in particular, but when he was away visiting he would go to whatever church his hosts went to. I think it was in Toronto once he was at the Roman Catholic, when the priest spoke to him after the service and said he was glad to see him returning to the true faith.

“Another time he was at church, somewhere in the country, with Sir Peregrine Maitland’s party, and was wearing the celebrated sheepskin coat which had for a hood the head of the beast, to be worn in bad weather, the wearer’s face covered and the eyes looking through the eyeholes. On this occasion the head was turned over the back of the collar part, in its usual place in fine weather or under cover. The text was that in which we were told to beware of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and as the words were said Talbot got up, gravely shook himself, turned round so that the sheep’s head was in full view, and equally gravely sat down again.

“His household furniture could not be called furniture at all; enough wooden chairs to sit on, and a table made of a couple of planks nailed to ‘sawhorses’ made the dining-room equipment when I knew him; but when the dinner was served the boards were covered with the finest damask, a white dinner service, good glass and silver. Geoffrey was as peculiar as his master, and once I heard Colonel Talbot ask him a question as he waited at table, and Geoffrey went to the cupboard, got what he wanted, put it on the table, went to the kitchen and returned again before answering his master’s question.

“His nephew, Julius Airey, was disgusted with the place and his anomalous position in it, brought there as the heir and no definite understanding arrived at, and he was kicking his heels in idleness and uncertainty between nineteen and twenty-four. In one of his letters home he drew a picture, a dreadful caricature of the colonel, which afterwards in some inexplicable manner found its way back to Talbot and decided him _not_ to make Julius his heir; it showed the dining-room in its bareness, a wooden hook on the wall bearing a bridle, and his uncle in a chair by the fire, choosing the moment to depict him just after a coal had hopped into his uncle’s big gaping pocket and set it afire. Colonel Talbot was very unfair to Julius, inasmuch as he kept him there all those years and never told him that he had better look for his own way in the world, as he was not to be the heir after all.

“My husband dined with Colonel Talbot once in every three weeks, and he never saw a badly served or badly cooked dinner, and only once did he see salt meat on the table, and that was put on on purpose. Sheriff Parkins, of London, famous for his championship of Queen Caroline, came as he said two thousand miles to visit Talbot, but Talbot could not be bothered with him, hence the salt meat. At dinner Parkins began to abuse Sir George Arthur; ‘Sir George is a friend of mine,’ said Talbot, but Parkins paid no attention to that--went on. ‘Sir George is a friend of mine,’ again said Talbot, and Parkins desisted for a while, but soon returned to the charge. ‘Sir George is a friend of mine,’ said Talbot for the third time, ‘and I will not have him so spoken of at my table.’ ‘Call it a _table_?’ said Parkins as he lifted the damask. ‘In my house, then,’ said Talbot. ‘Call it a house? It is nothing but a dog-kennel, and as for your _table_, I have seen nothing but salt junk.’ ‘Geoffrey,’ said Talbot, ‘this gentleman is ready to go, bring him his horse,’ and Parkins went off in a rage, such a rage that when he reached the inn he kicked a panel of his bedroom door through with one blow from his heavily booted foot. The sheriff had time to tell one good story, that Caroline was so fond of Sydney Smith, who also befriended her, that she had a large portrait of him hung on her walls; when he next came to see her, her broken English announced that she had put him among her ‘household dogs.’

“Geoffrey was a great character, but he and his master understood each other thoroughly. They came together in a characteristic way. One day when Talbot was visiting somewhere in the Old Country the host found fault with the footman for bringing in cold plates; next day the plates were so red hot that the host first jumped, then swore, and then dismissed the man. ‘That’s the man for me,’ said Colonel Talbot, ‘I like him for that hot plate business,’ and he engaged Geoffrey on the spot. Whatever eccentricity his master chose to perpetrate Geoffrey would second it, and they made a formidable pair. Talbot hated the Scotch, and once when he saw someone approach who turned out to be a friend, he excused his first coldness by saying, ‘Oh, I thought you were one of those abominable Scotch.’ Although Irish himself, he had no trace of any nationality but English. He was English in speech and prejudice. How he got on so well with Dunlop was hard to understand, unless it was on the score of mutual eccentricity. And Dunlop was desperately rude. Once in Toronto a member of Parliament invited my husband and me to dine at the members’ mess, and it happened that in that big roomful of men I was the only woman. I sat near one end, at the right hand of our host, and Dr. Dunlop was at the extreme end of the table, too far off to speak to. He began to talk at the top of his voice, so that the whole long table could hear him, and he stated that he had been in the Talbot settlement, where there was not such a thing as a gate; when you came to a fence you had to straddle it, and that’s what they all did, men and women alike. Now was not that rude, with me at the table! If I had been near him I would have given him some of my mind, I assure you. And besides, it was a great falsehood.”

One story told in extenuation of Talbot’s business methods is that a local Deborah undertook to overcome the great colonel of whom everyone else was afraid. He went to her homestead to adjust some land dispute; their words waxed high, until she, unable to dispose of him in any other way, knocked him down, made shafts of the legs of this descendant of the Kings of Connaught, and dragged him to the roadside while his back performed the part of a Canadian summer sled. In his own words, this lady was a true Scotch virago. One day as he sat at dinner her counterpart entered the dining-room, Geoffrey as usual serving. She announced that she had come for a horse, to get provisions from the blockhouse. The latter had been built in the early days at a point midway between Port Talbot and Long Point, the two extremes of the infant settlement, where flour, pork, and other provisions might be imported by boat and then distributed according to the Czar’s judgment. She was told she might have Bob, a quiet, strong horse; but she had set her heart on Jane, the beast kept for the Colonel’s own use and ridden by none else. Most emphatically she was told she should not have Jane. She seized the carving-fork and threatened “to run it through him;” so, in his own words as he told the story to a friend, “I had to holloa to Geoffrey to give the Scotch devil the mare.”

To protect himself as much as possible from intrusion he had a window adjusted on the primeval post-office system, the pane arranged so that it would open and shut from within. During the audiences Geoffrey stood behind him to hand down the maps, and the intending purchaser was left on the path outside. The inevitable query was, “Well, what do you want?” The trembling applicant made an answer, the land was given or refused as the case might be, and to speed the parting guest the equally inevitable concluding remark, “Geoffrey, turn on the dogs,” followed. It was destined that his third downfall should be accomplished by a Highlander. The latter had several glasses of brandy at the inn near by, and when the landlord demurred at giving more, “You must let me have it,” said the other, “for I am going to see that old Irish devil, Colonel Talbot, who took my land from me, and if he will not give it back I’ll give him the soundest thrashing a man ever got, for I will smash every bone in his body.” He was given the desired extra glass, and somewhat exhilarated reached the historic pane, through which justice, land, curses and kindness were dispensed according to the humour of the hour. An Englishman is always supposed to be in his best mood after dinner; with the Colonel time after that function was sacred, and all business had to be transacted before it. Up came the truculent Highlander this day, and out came the usual “Well, and what do you want?” The grievance was explained; he wanted his land back again. The refusal was prompt, and as prompt the blow that was aimed in return. That ended the affair for the day; but on the next, as the Colonel walked down his avenue, he saw the Highlander waiting for him. Shaking his fist at him, he cried, “Clear yourself off, you----Heeland rascal--did you not yesterday threaten to break every bone in my skin!” But pupil of the Duke of York, comrade of Arthur Wellesley as he was, the Colonel thought it wise to seek the seclusion of his own room. A week from that time his closest friend smilingly said, “Our friend the Port Talbot Chief has at last met his match in the person of this Scotchman.” The ladies were not counted. Instead of taking himself off as commanded, the Highlander had gone into the kitchen and sat himself down with the Colonel’s men at dinner. He did the same at supper, and following the men to their long bedroom, jumped into bed. The next morning he was the first at breakfast, the same at dinner and supper. This went on for two days. Geoffrey complained, the Highlander was ordered to the window, and the Colonel demanded what he meant by such behaviour. “I mean to live and die with you, you old devil, if you do not give me back my land.” He was in return commanded to take his land, and commended to a climate less arctic than the one of their mutual choice. “Never let me see your face again” was the final adjuration from the window. Two Amazons and a Highlander had conquered the Lion of Port Talbot.

It is certain that one of the Deborahs of ’37 was Anna Jameson the _Ennuyée_, for if her husband was not quite like the cypher Lapidoth her memory somewhat overshadows his. If we accept her opinions of Toronto as qualified by the unfortunate circumstances and mishaps attending her arrival, we still have no wish to alter her descriptions and impressions elsewhere in Canada. She was one of the many distinguished visitors to Port Talbot, and she has left us her view of its master and by inference his view of her. But those who knew him better contend that he did not like or admire her. In the first place she committed the unpardonable sin of borrowing money, which was not replaced. During her visit he was not too polite to her, and he did not hesitate to express his opinion after she had gone.

Of course, a dozen love stories clung round the Colonel’s early days; there were speculations as to what could have induced such a self-burial, but they were all of the hearsay order. One was that he was jilted at the altar, set sail, and we know the rest. Another, that in the sylvan court of George III. the young princesses, aides, equerries and courtiers made hay together, and, in spite of the Royal Marriage Act, also fell in love. One of the princesses--the name does not transpire--it was said cared for the dapper little lieutenant. Among the never-ending romances, heartbreaks and silent partings which haunt the walls of royal palaces and the pathways of royal parks, may be the love story which resulted in the determination--“Here, General Simcoe, will I rest and will soon make the forest tremble under the wings of the flock which I shall invite by my warblings around me.”

However, “I never saw but one woman I ever really cared anything about,” was his own admission, “and she wouldn’t have me; and, to use an old joke, those who would have me, the devil wouldn’t have them.” The one lady was no princess, but owned to the name of Johnstone. Whatever his ideal had been, Mrs. Jameson, wandering about the country without a maid and in a lumber-waggon, as he called it, was not to his taste. She on her part was very proud of her contrivances, and unstrapped her mattress to show him how comfortable she could be at all times when beds were not forthcoming; but he gruffly turned his back and muttered something he would not say aloud.

Mrs. Jameson’s observations on Canadian society, as it was then, are by no means bad, and it is easy to believe them; but when she allows such distaste or her own painful position to overshadow her cheerfulness and express nothing but regret at seeing Niagara--she would have preferred it a Yarrow unvisited--she need not be taken altogether at her own valuation as a prophetess. We can sympathise with her “By the end of the year I hope, by God’s mercy, to be in England,” but no further. But, generally speaking, she must have been a fascinating woman; plain at first sight, her mind, manners and accomplishments obliterated the impression, and the charm was heightened by beautiful hands, a sweet voice, and fair hair of a reddish tinge. The voice she used with great effect in singing, but the hair she allowed to be seen in curl papers when she received her callers in the new Canadian London in the year ’37, when en route from the Colonel’s to the omega of her “wild journey,” Mackinaw.

Perhaps at no one spot in Canada could there be found a larger gathering of Deborahs, than at what was called the Talbot anniversary, a yearly fête instituted by John Rolph in honour of the day when his friend, the Honourable Thomas Talbot, landed his canoe for good at the scene of his future life. On each 21st May the backwoodsman left his toil, the spinning wheels were silent, and arm-in-arm the settlers, men and wives, came in to enjoy themselves and see the faces which, as a rule, they had no other chance to see. The first fête was held at Yarmouth Heights, in the grounds and under the superintendence of Captain Rappelje. The tables were laid in a bower of cedar and other sweet woods, and the hepatica, anemone and violet were the decorations. The two hundred people who sat down to dinner had come long distances, some from Long Point and London. The board groaned under venison, wild turkey and many toothsome edibles, and when these were disposed of “The King,” “The day and all who honour it,” called forth shouts from lungs strong as the arms that raised the glasses high. Then the storm subsided, and the Colonel, still fair but “short, stout, and showing his hardships and years, rose and made a speech, short, neat and explicit, ending with ‘And may God bless you all.’” The upper story of the Rappelje house was in one large room, and here the ball was held when the pleasures of the dinner were concluded. Above the musicians’ seat was a large transparency, “Talbot Anniversary,” a tree with an axe laid at the root as an emblem. The “squirrel” was the Colonel’s favourite figure in the dance, and this night he “led off” Macdonell’s Reel with the mother of the fair-haired miss who had spoken up so boldly as to his woman-hating. He certainly now made good his rejoinder that he liked a pretty girl as well as anybody, for in the succeeding dances he managed to secure, not only the prettiest girls there, but the prettiest in the settlement. The room was of course lighted with tallow candles, but it needed no modern power of electricity to show the delight of the assembled youth in their version of the Spanish fandango.

In 1830 the anniversary was held in the St. Thomas Hotel, when “the prettiest girl in the district” led off with the Colonel. She was dressed “in a sky-blue poplin stripe”--a blue satin and a white stripe alternating--“embossed, trimmed with white satin and white blonde,” white flowers and white gloves; her shoes she made herself, getting Hyndman, the bootmaker, to add fine dancing soles to them. Any one to whom the Colonel paid his rare attentions at once became an object of interest and perhaps envy. His complexion won for him several inelegant comparisons, and the pretty girl was twitted about “that old turkey-cock,” and “folks said she would not leave till his health was drunk for the last time.” In the succeeding years, as ’37 troubles loomed and burned and settled into quiet again, the character of this entertainment changed. The regiment stationed in London and St. Thomas contributed to the gathering, and the red-coats only too successfully did by the home-spun as they had done previously by the “black-coated laity.” They even supplanted the original toast with “Here’s to red wine, red coats, _red face_ and right royal memories.” The red face of the Colonel was the only relic of former times left. The peasant and lord of the manor element in the feast changed; the very celebration of it was removed from St. Thomas to London, where it soon died a natural death, the old zest gone, the raison d’être of its being destroyed.

* * * * *

For warlike times, these western Deborahs had an easy billet. Farther east and on the Niagara frontier the women knew more of what war really meant. There were short periods of anxiety, as in Galt, when the order came to muster, and great was the consternation among the wives. They met in congregation, all crying over the husbands they might see no more. But the husbands were returned to them that same night, whole and sound, and the rejoicing was proportionate. One company told off to make arrests at different points came across an Atalanta, who this time used her powers to save a husband. In the house of one of the suspects an assemblage was found talking over rebellion matters with great zest and with no marked admiration of the loyalist side of it. A private was sent to the barn where it was hoped the host might be found, and another was directed to hold this said wife while others should go over the fields to arrest her husband, who would be unprepared for them. She dodged the volunteer and took to flight, the man in pursuit, down the path-way, over scrub, through fields, through bush, through briar, over park, over pale--and the advantage lay in the fences. She, with skilful management of dress, vaulted the accustomed “snake” like a bird; he came to grief in a mixture of rail, ditchwater and mud. This gave her such a start that by the time he picked himself up she had reached her goal, and man and wife were so safely hidden that no sign of them could be seen. Of all the party then taken only one suffered. He was sentenced to be hanged, but that sentence was commuted to penal servitude, under which he died.

The isolated farm-houses in the eastern part of Upper Canada and in Lower Canada suffered severely from the wanton attacks of rebels and sympathisers; and as for the terrors, the woes, the tears of the Lower Canadian women and children at the hands of the military, what pen can tell, what tongue describe them. On the island of Tanti a band of Bill Johnston’s marauders attacked the lonely farm occupied by a family named Preston. The mother, of truly heroic mould, regardless of numbers and the sentinels at her doors, contrived to get abroad to alarm her few neighbours. All her worldly goods, money, provisions, arms, were taken, one son died of his wounds, and the husband barely escaped with his life. What could such islanders do? Hickory Island had as its tenant one lone widow.

On a night early in November, ’38, a rising took place in Lower Canada at Beauharnois and La Tortu. La Tortu was a small village near La Prairie; the chief sufferers were two farmers, Vitry and Walker. The outlying situations of the farms gave the marauders ample chance to have their own way, and one “_voluntary_” contribution to the patriot cause, at Pointe à la Mule, was made at the instance of a party of masked men who emptied the farmer’s savings-box, and comforted him by saying that he had helped on the Cause. Vitry and Walker were murdered. The wife of the latter arrived with her child in Montreal on the following Sunday, the day of the great illumination and the issue of Sir John’s proclamation, in which he announced his intention to destroy every town where rebels were gathered or where they might be taking shelter. The proclamation added that he would deal with cases of conspiracy or rebellion according to martial law, “either by death or otherwise, as to me shall seem right and expedient.” Like the dreaded Duke of Burgundy, the motto “I have undertaken it” might be seen in his eyes. Even the peaceable Lord Durham had just said, deprecating a renewal of the rebellion, that to those who should succeed in producing lamentable results like to the scenes of ’37 would the responsibility belong. The sight of Mrs. Walker, literally covered with her husband’s blood, and her description of what was evidently her heroic resistance, did not tend to allay the excitement.

Montreal had now a strong picket guard surrounding it, two thousand men besides the militia were under arms, and the times, instead of having a depressing effect, tended to exhilaration as well as illumination. Agreeably to orders, the inhabitants placed two lights in every window to assist the troops in case of attack. It is hard to credit that the soldiery then in Canada was close upon the number of the pith of the allied forces at Waterloo.

The rising at Beauharnois has an added interest through the seigneur, Mr. Ellice, Lord Durham’s brother-in-law, who reigned after the manner of Talbot and Dunlop, but not in such dictatorial fashion. He was a man in affluent circumstances, and while in Canada as one of Lord Durham’s suite had begun new roads, built bridges and made other improvements on his estate, using therefor several years’ back rents and the benefits which would be accruing for years to come. With his wife and son he arrived to receive the affectionate homage of his dependants, with whom he imagined an intercourse full of confidence was established. The family had been received with the customary respect, and were naturally surprised when, at dead of night, they recognized in the mob a good many of their tenants. A volley was poured in, the house invaded, one lady wounded, and the rest of the party carried off to be shut up with thirty prisoners from the _Henry Brougham_. From the tale recently told by an old rebel, himself but half willing, it appears that many of these tenants were brutally coerced into rising by the patriot body. Ellice’s house had been despoiled of fourteen guns and other arms, and eleven barrels of cartridges, but not before one servant at least had made a spirited resistance; he succeeded in tying up some of the rebels, for which he was treated severely later on.

The _Brougham_ had been burnt at the wharf, and the passengers captured; but the despatches, the things on board most coveted, escaped. A lady passenger proved equal to the question as to where they and a large sum in bank bills which the captain had contrived to keep possession of but could not hide, should be concealed. “_Honi soit qui mal y pense_”--she rolled them into a bundle and converted herself into a Bustle-Queen-at-Arms.

That the whole party was not killed was probably owing to the dispersion of the main body of rebels at Napierville, another point of simultaneous attack. The household of a large landowner named Brown, who in himself and his circumstances was much like Ellice, was treated in the same way. Some of the Ellice servants escaped, fled to Montreal, and there told a tale of how the family was confined in a cellar, with other particulars not calculated to allay popular alarm. Ellice, Brown, and some others were now separated from the rest and taken to Chateauguay, where they were put in a room from which daylight was carefully excluded, but which was afterwards lighted by candles. In it they were well treated by the curé, M. Quintal, and nuns, who sent them such comforts from their larders and cellars as compel disbelief in a double Lent. The prisoners could also send to the village for whatever they wished to buy, but they were not allowed to send any letters unread by the rebels. Presently they were packed into carts to be conveyed to Napierville, no doubt with many memories of Jock Weir to discompose them; but by the time the seigniory of St. George was reached their escort heard that the patriots had not only evacuated Napierville, but in their haste had thrown away their arms and were now pursued by cavalry. The escort fled and the prisoners continued on their way, even advised by passing rebel habitants as to the best means to extricate themselves, and eventually reached Montreal, where their plight created a fresh sensation. But they retained warm memories of the curé’s kindness, and later presented him with a piece of plate with thanks for his hospitality.

Meantime an old Deborah, in the guise of a squaw, who hunted a lost cow in the woods at Caughnawaga, came into the church where the Indians were at their prayers with the alarming news that the woods were full of rebels and that a party was then surrounding the church. The braves turned out, and the chief’s flexible glottis turned from the plaintive melody of Indian hymns to a warwhoop, an example which was promptly followed by the rest. The nearest rebel was seized and disarmed, a panic took the patriot band, sixty-four were made prisoners, and they were taken into Montreal that same Sunday of great excitements. The lack of a cowbell, warwhoops and daring, had paralyzed a fair-sized, fairly armed force. The Indian appears no more, but one hopes he got what all Indians so dearly prize, a medal.

After this, fires were seen to break out almost simultaneously from the houses of the absent rebels, and soon Mr. Ellice’s flourishing little settlement was in ashes. For nights the atmosphere of Chateauguay district was red with reflected light from the “vast sheet of livid flame.” Portraits of Washington, Jefferson, and other republican heroes, were found in Dr. Côte’s house, and it is said they were committed by Sir John’s orders to a specially hot corner, with the customary “so perish all traitors.” The regulars, who had arrived to avenge the Beauharnois and other disturbances, came in the _John Bull_--an ominous name for the peace of poor Jean. This part of the expedition was under command of Sir James McDonell, a very different person from the next McDonell quoted. But after they had watched the lights on the enemy’s fast-deserted outposts die, they made a grand haul of curious literature, patriot documents describing a plan of Canada’s future government, with the names of ministers and heads of all departments told off--many details interesting to those who, doubtless, under the new régime would decorate gallows and occupy cells.

Colonel Angus McDonell of the Glengarries writes distressedly from Beauharnois: “We proceeded towards Beauharnois by a forced march, burning and laying waste the country as we went along, and it was a most distressing and heart-rending scene to see this fine settlement so completely destroyed, the houses burned and laid in ashes, and I understand the whole country to St. Charles experienced the same fate. The wailing and lamentation of the women and children on beholding their homes in flames and their property destroyed, their husbands, fathers, sons and relations, dragged along prisoners--women perishing in the snow, and children frozen stiff by their side or scattered in black spots upon the snow--half-grown children running frantic in the woods, frightened at the sight of friend or foe--and such of the habitants as did not appear, their houses were consigned to the flames, as they were supposed to be rebels.” One of the last had gone the day before to Montreal on business, and returned to find the above condition of things, his home in ashes, his wife and child missing. Passion and grief overcame fear; in a frenzy he rushed to an officer--“Ah, you burn my house, kill my wife--my dear wife--my little child--me always good subject--no rebel--_sacre_ British--where _ma femme_--where _mon enfant_--oh, _Jesu Marie_--” and dropped senseless. He was sent to Montreal, where in a few days he died in prison, still calling on wife and child. When the former, who had taken refuge with a relative, heard he was a prisoner, she went on foot to Montreal, her child in her arms; she reached the prison the night before his death, but was refused admittance, and a few days’ further agony ended her troubles also.

It is popularly supposed that the humble habitant wife was the one who suffered most; but degree did not save a woman from gross insult and spoliation, nor was the gentlewoman lacking in ingenuity. On the morning of the battle of St. Denis brave Madame Pagé of that place made her husband a novel armour, a cuirass of a quire of paper. It saved his life, for in the mêlée a ball otherwise intended for his destruction got no farther than the fourth fold. Mesdames Dumouchel, Lemaire, Girouard and Masson were not exempt when the loyal, the volunteer and the regular arrived at their doors. The regulars forbade the habitants to succour any in distress, and when these women were left almost nude outside their desolated homes they showed wonderful nerve in surviving the vengeance of ce vieux brûlot and his followers. But Mdlles. Lemaire and Masson could not sustain the shock to mind and body, and one young two-days’ mother died from fright. Madame Mongrain barely escaped with life and children, and her handsome home was quickly a wreck under the hands of “ces sauvages,” who gambolled and skipped in the light of its blaze, to the playing of their own trumpets and uttering “les cries feroces.” Madame Masson, when adjuring her son, Dr. Hyacinth Masson, on the eve of his exile to Bermuda, to be brave in the future as in the past, delivered herself of Spartan sentiments worthy of any historic setting, concluding her address, “Sois courageux jusqu’ à la fin. Je suis fière de toi. Je me consolerai dans ton absence en pensant que Dieu m’ a donné des enfants aussi bon patriotes _et dignes de moi_.” No wonder men were staunch when their mothers exerted an influence which after the lapse of sixty odd years draws forth from a former Son of Liberty-Chasseur: “I was vigorous and strong in those days, and from my mother inherited an ardent love for the country in which I was born. Her letters so magnetized me with patriotism that I could willingly lay down my life for the cause.”

Sir John was no novice in dealing with the French after his governorship in the island of Guernsey. He made us a link between old and new by bestowing the name of Sarnia on the St. Clair border, a name written of as the old classical one of that moiety of England’s sole relic of the Dukedom of Normandy. There the language of debate and of the Legislature was French, and the patois of the islander as perverted a language as the Canadian’s.

At the present day there are probably not many Glengarries left to tell the tale of their share in that terrible week. One, an Englishman moreover, who became a Highlander through stress of circumstances, remembers very distinctly the work which he confesses he did faithfully but with many heartbreaks for the women and children. It is unnecessary to say that he is devoted still to the memory of Sir John Colborne. “We were at the Prescott windmill, but had only been at work there one day and one night when we were ordered to Beauharnois, five hundred of us. Sir John was there before us. There was a mistake in the time of the arrival of the troops he expected--trouble about a boat and difficulties with the current. We walked all the way to Beauharnois, and hadn’t bite or sup except half a snack at Cornwall, and the men were all worn out with excitement and work at Prescott. Sir John, on a little black pony, met us just by a small bay at the Cedar Rapids. ‘Now, boys,’ says he, ‘I’ll ride my pony on before you--where I go you can. Come on!’ So we broke step and spread, for fear of the ice breaking, and followed him in safety. When he saw us five hundred, and thinking of his disappointment about the regulars, he says, ‘We can face ‘em with _that_.’ Some of those nearest him objected that the Glengarries had no band, and a band would be indispensable in a fight. So a big strapping Highlander steps up and says, ‘We’ll make a band of our own.’ ‘Never mind a band,’ says Sir John. ‘But I’m a piper, and there are a lot more of us, and we can be a band,’ says the man. ‘All right,’ says Sir John, ‘but anyway those Glengarries would face anything.’ Then they got their pipes together and made their band, and the big fellow says, ‘What’ll we play, Governor?’ and Sir John says, ‘Play what you like, play what you like.’ So they did play,--‘The Campbells are comin’, ha--hah--ha--_hah_, and of course the Frenchmen couldn’t stand _that_. Losh, how the people did run!”

This informant’s tale was something after the fashion of that told of the piper who fell out of the retreating ranks at Corunna--where Major Colborne’s advancement had been included in Sir John Moore’s dying wishes--and sat on a log to rest. A bear came on the scene just as the Highlander was eating the remainder of his rations. He recognized the bear from its picture, and on the policy of conciliation so soon to become national propitiated him with bite about. The bread disappeared all too soon, and the Highlander cautiously reached for his pipes. At the first squeal the bear was astonished, at the full blast he fled. “Oh, ho,” said the piper, “if she’d known you liked music so well she would haf played pefore dinner.”

On the present occasion it was the ordinary Highland music before dinner, for the Glengarries were empty.

“Sir John now told us to lose no time in attending to fourteen small cannon that were looking down at us from the top of the incline where the priest’s house stood. Losh! if they’d fired their one wooden cannon it would have smothered the half of us. Yes, a wooden cannon it was, hooped in iron, and if you’d seen the stuff we took out of it afterwards at Montreal--for Sir John was bound to keep it and send it to England--horse-shoes, smoothing irons, nails, balls, and every kind of rubbish. It was a twelve-pounder, easily handled, and some of the men drew it to Montreal. Then we were told to feed ourselves. And we did. We stole right and left, and there wasn’t a chicken left alive; it was a turkey here and a duck there; hens, anything we could catch; fence-rails were piled and a camp-fire made. We covered the geese and fowls with clay, thrust them into the fire, and when the clay cracked they were ready, for feathers and skin came off with it. Some would snatch a wing, others a leg; and man, there was some could stand a whole bird, inside and out. But hungry as I was, I couldn’t stomach it. Three others and I went to a little store near by, where we got some brown bread and some cheese on the counter; we found a cupboard in the cellar, and in it a nice ham, a box of bottled ale turned up, and we took a bottle apiece. Then we went and sat behind the house, and had a good English supper of it; and it had to last us till we got to Montreal.

“‘Now, then,’ said Sir John, when we were all through, ‘set fire and burn it.’ And we did. He was still thirsting to revenge Jock Weir. It was Jock Weir here and Jock Weir there, but he told us to spare the priest’s house--which we did. We were young, and it was a kind of a frolic to us; but oh, those women and children! I wake in the night and think I hear them yet. Losh! I’ll never forget it--a woman with a child under each arm, others tugging at her skirts. But we did them no harm; we only burnt everything up. The Colonel told them they needn’t be afraid; but what was the good of stopping when their homes were to be burnt! They went off to the woods, and, man! it was terrible--terrible. We got to Beauharnois at two in the morning, and we had it afire by six; left at eight, and were in Montreal by noon. Here we had our barracks in the emigrant sheds. Sir John took a great notion to us. ‘_I’ll_ drill you, you Glengarry men!’ And he _did_. We were devoted to him, and obeyed almost before he spoke--when there was anything to do. So he drilled us that day for about two hours on the ice, and you should have seen some of those poor kiltie regulars! You know, Sir John was a _good_ man, but he was a rough ’un, and he wanted everything just as _he_ said. But losh, man, it was a shame to drill them for two hours on the ice. The poor rogues threatened they would go home--the 93rd they were, afterwards in Toronto. They wore kilts, but we had trousers, blue with red stripe; we did have red coats, too, but it’s all true about the way we came home on horseback, and with plug hats, too, and in fact with anything we could lay our hands on. There was a great deal of talk about it, I believe; but Sir John made us return the things afterwards. One big fellow, at Beauharnois, saw a beautiful sofa going into the fire, so he seized it and said he would have it. He heaved it out, but losh, man, when the orders came to march on to Montreal he didn’t know what to do with it, and had to chuck it into the river. We were two weeks in Montreal, and we stood guard at the executions. It was a dreadful sight to see men hung up in a row, all dropped at once. Yes, there was a ‘movable gallows,’ and a very tidy thing it was. It was put up in an hour, and when the execution was over, the Colonel said, ‘Go drill those men;’ when we came back, in an hour, there was no sign of it left. An attempt at rescue was feared, and they said Papineau himself was there to see--a tall, middling stout man, a regular Frenchman, and they _said_ it was Papineau. We were well treated, fed whenever there was anything to eat, and properly paid at the end. So Sir John came to the barracks one morning, and says he, ‘You Glengarries can go now, for all the good you are!’ And that was just what we wanted.”

“The ghost of a goose is a curious sight,
A strange enough phantom at best,”

but when it is that of a military goose, and history records not whether goose or gander, biography becomes delicate writing. In ’37, not only were men warlike and women sympathetic, but the very geese flew to arms. “Confoun’ a’ questions o’ dates,” says the _Noctes_; confoun’ a’ questions o’ sex--the goose of the Coldstream Guards must not be forgotten; the black-coated laity thought they possessed many such. This lineal descendant of the fabulous Roman bird was born and brought up in the citadel at Quebec, which may be the reason that it despised the estate of _oie des moissons_ and aspired to that of _anser ruficollis_ upon a battlefield. One day, in its morning walk on that historic ground, it left the flock forever, stepped up to the sentry, paced back and forth with him on his beat, gravely ducking at every arch, and when rain came on and he turned into the sentry-box goosie got in too, poked out her head, and kept at attention until the corporal came with the relief. The ensuing ceremony met with her approbation, as did the new guard; she gave one last look at the retreating figure, and began her walk up and down with the new. Thereafter, the sentry order always finished, “In case of fire alarm the guard, _and take care of the goose_.”

’Twould offend against taste in ordinary cases

“To tell how poor goosie was put out of pain
(And the plucking and basting we need not explain);”

and how this innovation on Follow-the-Drum in after years made the voyage home with her regiment and continued her duties in Portman Street barracks, till a military funeral finished her course, belongs to the history of Her Majesty’s forces. That she was a goose is proved by record of her characteristics; _anser canadensis_ is a clamorous bird, and armed humans underneath his flight are made aware of his presence by his noisy gabble--if silent he would never be discovered. It is said the prudent fair ones of the flock keep a chucky-stone in the mouth during travel, in order to guard against temptation. Therefore, as the Great Grey Goose of the West was a gander and gabbler, the silent sentry, the goose militant of the Coldstream Guards, must have been a goose, and is a Deborah.

* * * * *

When we come to the details of Mackenzie’s life, his attitude towards wife and bairns and mother and theirs towards him would disarm even his political critic. There is the meeting of the two old schoolmates, Isabel Baxter and Mackenzie, without recognition, the brief courtship, and a life of mutual devotion. There is baby Joseph Hume, whose early death saddened the father’s life; and there is the pathetic entry in his diary, after his rebellion had entailed banishment: “My daughter Janet’s birthday, aged thirteen. When I came home in the evening we had no bread; took a cup of tea without it, and Helen, to comfort me, said it was no better on the evening of my own birthday.”

They drank the cup of poverty together, father, mother, grandmother and children. For twenty-four hours at a stretch there was no food, fire or light; and after such a fast the father would go forth shivering to collect a small due or meet a friend willing to share a sixpence. The younger children never ceased to cry for food; the others suffered in silence. We read of the servant, one of the true-hearted Irish, and she is content to starve with the rest. Despite poverty, the father continued to wear a watch, once the property of his eldest daughter, whom he sincerely mourned for twelve years with an almost superstitious veneration. We find him telling his son to cheer up, not to despond; that there are green spots in the desert of life; that after darkness comes light. And even in this dreadful plight there are moments when the tragic becomes serio-comic. There is a night when the plaintive sounds from the darkness about him urge him to make one more assault upon the cupboard that he knows is empty--no, not quite empty; there is a book, and by the embers of their dying fire he reads the title, “The Dark Ages,” and he and all indulge in a hearty laugh, and then go supperless--nay, breakfastless and dinnerless--to bed.

The family did not follow him into exile immediately, but his devoted wife reached Navy Island a few hours before the dramatic moment when Drew arrived and the _Caroline_ became a torch. Like Deborah, she, too, might have said, “I will surely go with thee, notwithstanding the journey shall not be for thine honour.” The general belief is that, though loyal to him and a staunch Reformer, she by no means sympathised in his ultra opinions and combustive action. She remained for two weeks in that dreadful place, made flannel cartridge-bags, slept in a rough log shanty on a shelf covered with straw, where the walls were poor protection from wet and cold and but a thin partition from the unholy clamour of the desperate crowd about her, and tried to inspire her husband and his followers by an example of courage and freedom from fear. Then ill-health obliged her to leave, and when accompanying her to the house of a friend in Buffalo Mackenzie was arrested for breach of the neutrality laws. Scylla and Charybdis, the devil and the deep sea, a dilemma with the orthodox number of horns, lose all strength as similes at this point of the small hero’s career.

The devotion of Mackenzie’s mother, like that of most mothers, begins at the date of his birth. She was her husband’s senior by nineteen years and old for a first experience of motherhood. The husband’s death followed soon after, and then came the vows which her Church prescribed for the orphaned infant’s baptism, a struggle with misfortune, and a determination to keep a roof over their two heads. Strange to say, both grandparents were Mackenzies,--one Black Colin, or Colin Dhu--and both Loyalists who fought for the Stuarts.

In 1801 there was a grievous famine, and one of the earliest memories of “the bright boy with yellow hair--wearing a blue short coat with yellow buttons,” is that of his mother taking the chief treasure of her kist, a plaid of her own clan tartan and spun with her own hands when a girl, to sell for bread. As he lay in his bed and watched her take it out--not with tears we may be sure, Mrs. Mackenzie was no crying woman--did this earnest of future days of want and care shadow the equally heroic spirit of the child. The priest-grey coat of his father had to follow. “Well may I love the poor, greatly may I esteem the humble and the lowly, for poverty and adversity were my nurses, and in my youth were want and misery my familiar friends,” he wrote later. Divine worship was held in that family of two, and it was a daily prayer that the rightful monarch might be set upon the throne, with the saving clause--prophetic glimpses of a Family Compact--that he might have able and wise counsellers, added.