Class ._. 
 Book 
 
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 Publishers, Limited ; 
 
 Printers, Bookbinders Etc 
 TORONTO, Can. 
 
Recollections 
 
 of 
 
 The American War 
 
First edition, 250 copies 
 Second edition, 750 copies 
 
WILLIAM DUNLOP, M.D. 
 From original painting in the possession of Mrs. Thos. McQaw. 
 
Recollections 
 
 of the 
 
 War of 1812 
 
 By 
 
 DR. WM. DUNLOP 
 
 1 1 
 
 With a Biographical Sketch of the Author by 
 A. H. U. Colquhoun, LL.D. 
 
 Deputy Minister of Education, Ontario 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 & \ 
 
 fU. E. Vj 
 ser.es g 
 — NO 3 $} 
 
 TORONTO : 
 
 HISTORICAL PUBLISHING CO. 
 1908. 
 
c 
 
 Entered according to the Act of the Parliament of Canada, in 
 the year nineteen hundred and eight, by the Historical Publishing 
 Co., at the Department of Agriculture. 
 
 /3 
 
 1 
 
 • • » 
 
 • J 
 
 • • f 
 
 TORONTO t 
 
 THE BRYANT PRESS, LIMITED 
 
Sketch of 
 
 Dr, William Dunlop 
 
 w 
 
 vt» 
 
 This reprint of an entertaining little nar- 
 rative of personal experiences in the War of 
 1812-14 may be appropriately prefaced by a 
 short account of the author. Few of the 
 pioneers of Upper Canada had careers as 
 varied and interesting as that of Dr. Wil- 
 liam Dunlop, and none possessed a person- 
 ality quite so striking and original as his. 
 On the Saltfort road, near Goderich, Can- 
 ada, there is a cairn marking the burial 
 place of two notable worthies of the Huron 
 Tract, and upon it is the following inscrip- 
 tion: 
 
Vlll. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 Here lies the body of 
 
 ROBERT GRAHAM DUNL,OP, ESQ. 
 
 Commander Royal Navy, M.P.P. 
 
 Who after serving his King and country in 
 
 every quarter of the globe, dies at Gair- 
 
 braid, on the 28th Feby., 1841, in 
 
 the 51 year of his age. 
 
 Also to the memory of 
 
 DR. WIIvLIAM DUNI.OP, 
 
 a man of surpassing talent, knowledge, 
 
 and benevolence, born in Scotland 
 
 in 1792. 
 
 He served in the army in Canada and in India 
 
 and thereafter distinguished himself 
 
 as an author and man of 
 
 letters. 
 
 He settled in .Canada permanently in 1825 and 
 for more than 20 years was actively 
 engaged in public and philan- 
 thropic affairs. 
 
 Succeeding his brother, Capt. Dunlop, as Mem- 
 ber of the Provincial Parliament and 
 taking successful interest in 
 the welfare of Canada, 
 and died lamented 
 by many 
 friends 
 1848. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH IX. 
 
 The elder of these two brothers, William 
 Dunlop, was born at Greenock, Scotland, in 
 1792, and became, when a stripling of scarce 
 21 years of age, a surgeon in the famous 
 88th,or,Connaught Rangers. Being ordered 
 to Canada, where the war with the United 
 States was in progress, he made his way to 
 the fighting line in the Niagara Peninsula, 
 and there, serving first as surgeon and after- 
 wards as a combatant, he gave indubitable 
 proofs of courage and capacity. When the 
 "appalling intelligence" of the peace con- 
 cluded by the Treaty of Ghent reached him, 
 Dunlop embarked with his regiment for 
 Kngland, just missing by a few days a share 
 in the glorious action of Waterloo, and was 
 ordered to India. While there his restless 
 activity occupied itself with his medical and 
 military duties, with the congenial task of 
 editing a newspaper, and with numerous 
 tiger hunts. So successful was he as a slay- 
 er of tigers that he earned the name of 
 "Tiger" Dunlop, and in his later Canadian 
 days was familiarly known as "The Tiger.' 
 An attack of jungle fever drove him back to 
 England on half-pay, and settling in London 
 he lived for a few years what has been call- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 ed a most miscellaneous life. He wrote ar- 
 ticles for the magazines. He edited for a 
 time a newspaper called the "British Press," 
 until he quarrelled with the publisher for 
 dismissing contemptuously a political up- 
 heaval in France in the following brief 
 "leader": l, 'We perceive that there is a 
 change of ministry in France; — we have 
 heard of no earthquakes in consequence!" 
 He edited a work on medical jurisprudence. 
 He started a Sunday newspaper for Anglo- 
 Indians called "The Telescope," the history 
 of which, declared one of his friends, was a 
 comedy of the drollest kind. He founded a 
 club, — being of convivial tastes and a prince 
 of boon companions, — called The Pig 
 and Whistle. Finally, — and this doubt- 
 less led to his returning to Canada, — 
 he became interested, as secretary, or, 
 director, in some industrial concerns, 
 notably a salt works in Cheshire. In 
 London he made the acquaintance of Mr. 
 John Gait, and accompanied him to Can- 
 ada in 1826. He received from the Canada 
 Company the appointment of Warden of the 
 Forests, and for twenty years was a lead- 
 ing figure in what we now call Western On- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XI. 
 
 tario. If one wishes to know "The Tiger" in 
 this period, he must be sought in the charm- 
 ing pages of the Misses Lizars' book "In the 
 Days of the Canada Company." There, his 
 rollicking humour, his broad sympathies, 
 his eccentric jests are excellently depicted. 
 Dunlop represented Huron in Parliament, 
 where he was a veritable "enfant terrible,' 
 speaking his mind in his slap dash way and 
 frequently convulsing the House with merri- 
 ment. The story of his tossing the coin 
 with his brother to settle which of them 
 should marry I^ou McColl, the Highland 
 housekeeper and devoted friend, and the 
 terms of his extraordinary will and testa- 
 ment,— one clause of which (typical of all) 
 leaves some property to a sister "because 
 she is married to a minister whom (God 
 help him) she henpecks", — are famous. Dun- 
 lop's literary talents were considerable. He 
 wearied of writing as he did of most things 
 that demanded continuous application. But 
 he had an easy style, much shrewd wit, and 
 undoubted ability. These qualities he dis- 
 played in his magazine articles, in his book 
 "The Backwoodsman," and in the "Recol- 
 lections," which are here reprinted from 
 
xii. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 "The Literary Garland," the Montreal peri- 
 odical of half a century or more ago. They 
 were penned long after the events concerned 
 had occurred and it may be supposed that 
 he fell into some errors of fact. But as a 
 picture of the manner in which this hap- 
 hazard war was conducted it is singularly 
 vivid and impressive. The unearthing of 
 manuscripts and official documents about 
 this war will not throw into clearer relief 
 than the following pages do, the desper- 
 ate circumstances under which a mere 
 handful of French Canadian and Loyalist 
 colonists emerged from their primitive 
 villages and log cabins and with Spartan 
 courage and hardihood drove back the in- 
 vader again and again and captured large 
 areas of his territory. There are several 
 readable sketches of these campaigns, but 
 none with the freshness and spirit of Dun- 
 lop's. In this lies its value and the justifica- 
 tion for preserving it. Dunlop retired from 
 Parliament in 1846, and was appointed Sup- 
 erintendent of the Lachine Canal. He died 
 in the village of Machine in the Autumn of 
 1848, and his body was conveyed to its 
 resting place at Goderich. 
 
 A. H. XJ. Colquhoun. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The favourable reception of a small work on 
 this colony has emboldened me again to come be- 
 fore the public in the character of an author, and 
 as it is fifteen years since I last obtruded myself 
 in that capacity, I have at least to boast of the 
 merit assumed to himself by the sailor in his 
 prayer, during a hurricane, "Thou knowest it is 
 seldom that I trouble thee," and I may hope on 
 the same grounds to be listened to. 
 
 It is now upwards of thirty-three years since I 
 became acquainted with this country, of which 
 I was eleven years absent. During that time I 
 visited the other quarters of the globe. My de- 
 sign in this work is to shew the almost incredi- 
 ble improvement that has taken place during 
 that period. Notwithstanding all that has been 
 written by tourists, &c, very little indeed is 
 known of the value and capabilities of Canada, 
 as a colony, by the people of Great Britain. 
 
 I have not arrived at anything like methodical 
 arrangement further than stating in their chro- 
 nological order, events and scenes of which I was 
 a witness, with occasional anecdotes of parties 
 therein concerned, so that those who do not ap- 
 prove of such a desultory mode of composition, 
 need not, after this fore-warning, read any further. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 My intention, in fact, is not exclusively either to 
 instruct or amuse, but, if I possibly can accom- 
 plish it, to do a little of both. I wish to give an 
 account of the effect of the changes that have 
 taken place in my day in the colony, on my own 
 feelings, rather than to enter into any philoso- 
 phical enquiry into their causes ; and if in this 
 attempt I should sometimes degenerate into 
 what my late lamented friend, the Ettrick Shep- 
 herd, would have denominated havers, I hope you 
 will remember that this is an infirmity to which 
 even Homer (see Horace,) is liable ; and if, like 
 hereditary disease, it is a proof of paternity, 
 every author in verse or prose who has written 
 since his day, has ample grounds whereon to 
 found its pretensions to a most ancient and hon- 
 ourable descent. 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 
 AMERICAN WAR 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " My native laud, good night."— Byron. 
 
 The end of March or the beginning of April, 
 1813, found me at the Army Depot in the Isle of 
 Wight. Sir Walter Scott in his Surgeon's Daugh- 
 ter, says that no one who has ever visited that 
 delightful spot can ever forget it, and I fully 
 agree with him, but though perfectly susceptible 
 of the impressions which its numberless beauties 
 leave on the mind, I must confess that the view 
 of a fleet of transports rounding St. Helens to 
 take us to our destination, would have been con- 
 sidered by myself and my comrades, as a pleas- 
 anter prospect than all Hampshire could offer to 
 our admiration. 
 
 I shall not stay to describe the state of mili- 
 tary society in those days at the Army Depot at 
 Parkhurst barracks and the neighbouring town of 
 Newport. It has been much better done than I 
 could expect to do, by Major Spencer Muggridge, 
 in Blackwood's Magazine ; all I can do as a sub- 
 altern, is fully to endorse the field officer's state- 
 ment, and to declare that it is a just, graphic and 
 by no means over-charged description. 
 
4 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 I went once, and only once, to the Garrison 
 Mess, in company with two or three officers of 
 my acquaintance, and saw among other novelties 
 of a mess table, one officer shy a leg of mutton 
 at another's head, from one end of the table to 
 the other. This we took as notice to quit ; so we 
 made our retreat in good order, and never again 
 returned, or associated with a set of gentlemen 
 who had such a vivacious mode of expressing a 
 difference of opinion. 
 
 The fact is, all the worse characters in the 
 army were congregated at the Isle of Wight ; 
 men who were afraid to join their regiments 
 from the indifferent estimation they were held in 
 by their brother officers. These stuck to the 
 depot, and the arrival of a fleet of transports at 
 Spithead or the Mother-bank, was a signal for a 
 general sickness among these worthies. And 
 this was peculiarly the case with those who were 
 bound for Canada, for they knew full well if they 
 could shirk past the month of August, there was 
 no chance of a call on their services until the 
 month of April following. And many scamps 
 took advantage of this. I know one fellow who 
 managed to avoid joining his regiment abroad for 
 no less than three years. 
 
 I took my departure from this military para- 
 dise for the first time, for this country, in the 
 beginning of August, 1813, in a small, ill-foundi, 
 undermanned, over-crowded transport, as trans- 
 ports in those days were very apt to be ; and 
 after a long, weary, and tempestuous voyage of 
 three months, was landed at Quebec in the begin- 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 5 
 
 ning of the following November. Next to the 
 tedium of a sea voyage, nothing on earth can be 
 so tiresome as a description of it ; the very inci- 
 dents which a Journal of such a pilgrimage com- 
 memorates shew the dreadful state of vacuum 
 and ennui which must have existed in the mind of 
 the patient before such trifles could become of 
 interest sufficient to be thought worthy of nota- 
 tion. A sail in sight, — a bunch of sea-weed 
 floating past the ship, — a log of wood covered 
 with barnacles,— or, better still, one of the nu- 
 merous tribe of Medusa, with its snake-like feelers 
 and changeable colours — a gull, or a flock of 
 Mother Carey's chickens, paddling in the wake, — 
 are occurrences of sufficient importance to call 
 upon deck all the passengers, even during dinner. 
 Or if they are happy enough to fall in with a 
 shoal of porpoises or dolphins, a flock of flying 
 fish, or a whale blowing and spouting near the 
 ship, such a wonder is quite sufficient to furnish 
 conversation for the happy beholders for the rest 
 of the voyage. For my own part, being familiar 
 with, and also seasoned to, all the wonders of 
 the deep, I make a vow whenever I go on board, 
 that nothing inferior in rank and dignity to a 
 sea-serpent shall ever induce me to mount the 
 companion ladder. On the whole, though it can- 
 not be considered as a very choice bit of reading, 
 I look upon the log-book as by far the best ac- 
 count of a voyage, for it accurately states all 
 that is worthy of note in the fewest possible 
 words. It is the very model of the terse didactic. 
 Who can fail to admire the Caesar-like brevity in 
 
6 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 an American captain's log : "At noon, light 
 breezes and cloudy weather, wind W.S.W., fell in 
 with a phenomenon — caught a bucket full of it." 
 Under all these circumstances, I think it is high- 
 ly probable that my readers will readily pardon 
 me for not giving my experience on this subject. 
 I met with no seas "mountains high," as many 
 who have gone down unto the sea in ships have 
 done. Indeed, though I have encountered gales 
 of wind in all the favorite playgrounds of Oeolus 
 — the Bay of Biscay — off the Cape of Good Hope 
 — in the Bay of Bengal — the coast of America, 
 and the Gulph of St. Lawrence, yet I never saw 
 a wave high enough to becalm the main-top sail. 
 So that I must suppose that the original inven- 
 tor of the phrase was a Cockney, who must have 
 had Garlic hill or Snow hill, or some of the 
 other mountainous regions of the metropolis in 
 his mind's eye when he coined it. 
 
 Arrived at Quebec, we reported ourselves, as in 
 duty bound, to the General Commanding, and by 
 his orders we left a subaltern to command the 
 recruits (most of whom, by the way, were mere 
 boys,) and to strengthen the Garrison of Quebec, 
 and the venerable old colonel and myself made 
 all haste to join our regiment up the country. As 
 my worthy old commander was a character, 
 some account of him may not be uninteresting. 
 
 Donald McB was born in the celebrated win- 
 ter of 1745-46, while his father, an Invernesshire 
 gentleman, was out with Prince Charles Edward, 
 who, on the unfortunate issue of that campaign 
 for the Jacobite interest, was fain to flee to 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 7 
 
 France, where he joined his royal master, and 
 where, by the Prince's influence, he received a 
 commission in the Scotch Regiment of Guards, 
 and in due time retired with a small pension 
 from the French King, to the town of Dunkirk, 
 where with his family, he remained the rest of 
 his days. 
 
 Donald, meanwhile, was left with his kindred in 
 the Highlands, where he grew in all the stinted 
 quantity of grace that is to be found in that bar- 
 ren region, until his seventh year, when he was 
 sent to join his family in Dunkirk. Here he was 
 educated, and as his father's military experience 
 had given him no great love for the profession of 
 arms, he was in due time bound apprentice to his 
 brother-in-law, an eminent surgeon of that town, 
 and might have become a curer instead of inflic- 
 ter of broken heads, or at least murdered men 
 more scientifically than with the broadsword ; 
 but fate ordered it otherwise. 
 
 Donald had an objection as strong to the lancet 
 as his father could possibly have to the sword. 
 Had the matter been coolly canvassed, it is hard 
 to say which mode of murder would have obtain-* 
 ed the preference, but, always hasty, he did not 
 go philosophically to work, and an accident de- 
 cided his fate as it has done that of many great- 
 er men. 
 
 A young nun of great beauty, who had lately 
 taken the veil, had the misfortune to break her 
 leg, and Donald's master, being medical man to 
 the convent, he very reasonably hoped that he 
 would assist in the setting of it— attending upon 
 
8 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 handsome young nuns might reconcile a man even 
 
 to being a surgeon of ; but his brother-in-law 
 
 and the abbess both entered their veto. Piqued 
 at this disappointment, next morning saw him 
 on the tramp, and the next intelligence that was 
 heard of him was that he was serving His Most 
 Christian Majesty in the capacity of a Gentleman 
 Sentinel, (as the Baron of Bradwardine hath it,) 
 in a marching regiment. 
 
 This settled the point. His father, seeing that 
 his aversion to the healing art was insuperable, 
 procured a commission in the Regiment de Dillon 
 or Irish Brigade of the French Service. 
 
 In this he served for several years, until he had 
 got pretty well up among the lieutenants, and in 
 due time might have figured among the marshals 
 of Napoleon ; but the American Revolution break- 
 ing out, and it being pretty apparent that France 
 and Great Britain must come into hostile col- 
 lision, his father, though utterly abhorring the 
 reigning dynasty, could not bear the idea of a 
 son of his fighting against his country and clan, 
 persuaded him to resign his commission in the 
 French Service, and sent him to Scotland with 
 letters of recommendation to some of his kin- 
 dred and friends, officers in the newly raised 
 Frazer Highlanders (since the 71st,) whom he 
 joined in Greenock in the year 1776, and soon 
 after embarked with them for America in the 
 capacity of a gentleman volunteer, thus beginning 
 the world once more at the age of thirty. 
 
 After serving in this regiment till he obtained 
 his ensigncy, he was promoted to be lieutenant 
 

 THE AMERICAN WAR 9 
 
 and adjutant in the Cavalry < of Tarlton's Legion, 
 in which he served and was several times wound- 
 ed, till the end of the war, when he was disband- 
 ed with, the rest of his regiment, and placed on 
 half pay. He exchanged into a regiment about 
 to embark for the West Indies, where in seven or 
 eight years, the yellow fever standing his friend 
 by cutting off many of his brother officers, while 
 it passed over him, he in progress of seniority, 
 tontined it up to nearly the head of the lieuten- 
 ants ; the regiment was ordered home in 1790, 
 and after a short time, instead of his company, 
 he received his half-pay as a disbanded lieutenant. 
 
 He now, from motives of economy as well as 
 to be near his surviving relatives, retired to Dun- 
 kirk ; but the approaching revolution soon call- 
 ed him out again, and his promotion, which, 
 though like that of Dugald Dalgetty, it was 
 "dooms slow at first," did come at last. Now 
 after thirty-seven years' hard service in the Brit- 
 ish Army, (to say nothing of fourteen in the 
 French) in North America, the West Indies, 
 South America, the Cape of Good Hope, Java 
 and India, he found himself a Lieutenant-Colonel 
 of a second battalion serving in Canada. Such is 
 a brief memoir of my old commanding officer. 
 He was a warm-hearted, hot-tempered, jovial, 
 gentlemanly old veteran, who enjoyed the pres- 
 ent and never repined at the past ; so it may 
 well be imagined that I was in high good luck 
 with such a compagnon de voyage. 
 
 Hearing that the American Army under Gen- 
 eral Wilkinson, was about to make descent on 
 
IO RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Canada somewhere about the lower end of Lake 
 Ontario, we were determined to push on with all 
 possible speed. 
 
 The roads, 4 however, were declared impracti- 
 cable, and the only steamboat the Canadas then 
 rejoiced in, though now they must possess nearly 
 one hundred, had sailed that day, and was not 
 expected to return for nearly a week ; so it was 
 determined we should try our luck in one of the 
 wretched river craft which in those days enjoyed 
 the carrying trade between Quebec and Montreal. 
 Into the small cabin, therefore of one of these 
 schooners we stowed ourselves. Though the 
 winds were light, we managed to make some way 
 as long as we could take advantage of the flood- 
 tide, and lay by during the ebb ; but after this 
 our progress was slow indeed ; not entirely from 
 the want of a fair wind, but from the cursed dila- 
 tory habits of Frenchmen and their Canadian 
 descendants in all matters connected with busi- 
 ness. At every village (and in Lower Canada 
 there is a village at every three leagues along the 
 banks of the St. Lawrence) our captain had or 
 made business — a cask of wine had to be deliver- 
 ed to " le digne Cure" at one place; a box of 
 goods to " M. le Gentilhomme de Magasin" at 
 another; the captain's "parents" lived within a 
 league, and he had not seen them for six weeks, 
 — so off he must go, and no prospect of seeing 
 him any more for that day. The cottage of the 
 cabin boy's mother unluckily lay on the bank of 
 the river, and we must lay to till madame came 
 off with confitures, cabbages and clean shirts for 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR II 
 
 his regalement ; then the embracing, and kissing, 
 and bowing, and taking off red night caps to 
 each other, and the telling the news and hearing 
 it, occupied ten times the space that the real 
 business (if any there was) could possibly require. 
 And all this was gone through on their part, as 
 if it was the natural and necessary consequence 
 of a voyage up the River Saint Lawrence. Haste 
 seemed to them quite out of the question ; and it 
 is next to impossible to get into a passion and 
 swear at a Frenchman, as you would at a sulky 
 John Bull, or a saucy Yankee, under similar cir- 
 cumstances, for he is utterly unconscious all the 
 time that he is doing anything unworthy ; he is 
 so polite, complaisant and good humoured withal, 
 that it is next to impossible to get yourself seri- 
 ously angry with him. On the fifth day of this 
 tedious voyage, when we had arrived within 
 about fifteen miles of Three Rivers, which is mid- 
 way between the two cities, we perceived the 
 steamboat passing upwards close under the op- 
 posite shore, and we resolved to land, knowing 
 that it was her custom to stop there all night, 
 and proceed in the morning ; accordingly we did 
 so, and in a short time were seated in a caleche 
 following at all the speed the roads would admit 
 of— by dint of hard travelling, bribing and coax- 
 ing, we managed to get to Three Rivers by 
 moonlight, about one in the morning. So far so 
 good, thought we ; but unluckily the moonlight 
 that served us, served the steamboat also, and 
 she had proceeded on her voyage before we came 
 up. As we now, however, had got quite enough 
 
13 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 of sailing, we determined to proceed by land to 
 Montreal. 
 
 The French, I suspect, have always been before 
 us in Colonial policy. An arbitrary government 
 can do things which a free one may not have the 
 nerve to attempt, particularly among a people 
 whose ignorance permits them to see only one 
 side of the question. 
 
 The system of land travelling in Lower Canada 
 was better, when we became master of it, than 
 it is now in any part of the North American 
 Continent. At every three leagues there was a 
 " Maison de Poste " kept by a functionary who re- 
 ceived his license from government, and denom- 
 inated a " Maitre de Poste." He was bound by his 
 engagement to find caleches and horses for all 
 travellers, and he made engagements with his 
 neighbors to furnish them when his were employ- 
 ed. These were called "Aides de Poste"; and 
 they received the pay when they performed the 
 duty, deducting a small commission for the 
 Maitre. They were bound to travel when the 
 roads admitted of it, at a rate not less than 
 seven miles an hour, and were not to exceed 
 quarter of an hour in changing horses ; and to 
 prevent imposition, in the parlour of each post 
 house, (which was also an inn,) was stuck up a 
 printed paper, giving the distance of each post 
 from the next, and the sum to be charged for 
 each horse and caleche employed, as well as other 
 regulations, with regard to the establishment, 
 which it was necessary for a traveller to know, 
 and any well substantiated charge against these 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 13 
 
 people was sure to call down summary punish- 
 ment. 
 
 The roads not being, as already remarked, in 
 the best order, we did not arrive at Montreal 
 till the end of the second day, when we were 
 congratulated by our more lucky companions 
 who had left Quebec in the steamboat three days 
 later, and arrived at Montreal two days before 
 us ; and we were tantalized by a description of 
 all the luxuries of that then little known convey- 
 ance, as contrasted with the fatigues and desc- 
 grements of our mode of progression. For the 
 last fifty miles of our route there was not to be 
 seen throughout the country a single man fit to 
 carry arms occupied about his farm or workshop; 
 women, children, or men disabled by age or de- 
 crepitude were all that were to be met with. 
 
 The news had arrived that the long threatened 
 invasion had at last taken place, and every avail- 
 able man was hurrying to meet it. We came up 
 with several regiments of militia on their line of 
 march. They had all a serviceable effective ap- 
 pearance — had been pretty well drilled, and their 
 arms being direct from the tower, were in per- 
 fectly good order, nor had they the mobbish ap- 
 pearance that such a levy in any other country 
 would have had. Their capots and trowsers of 
 home-spun stuff, and their blue tuques (night 
 caps) were all of the same cut and color, which 
 gave them an air of uniformity that added much 
 to their military look, for I have always remark- 
 ed that a body of men's appearance in battalion, 
 depends much less on the fashion of their indi- 
 
14 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 vidual dress and appointments, than on the 
 whole being in strict uniformity. 
 
 They marched merrily along to the music of 
 their voyageur songs, and as they perceived our 
 uniform as we came up, they set up the Indian 
 War-whoop, followed by a shout of Vive le Roi 
 along the whole line. Such a body of men in 
 such a temper, and with so perfect a use of their 
 arms as all of them possessed, if posted on such 
 ground as would preclude the possibility of regu- 
 lar troops out-manoeuvering them, (and such posi- 
 tions are not hard to find in Canada,) must have 
 been rather a formidable body to have attacked. 
 Finding that the enemy were between us and our 
 regiment, proceeding to join would have been out 
 of the question. The Colonel therefore requested 
 that we might be attached to the militia on the 
 advance. The Commander-in-Chief finding that 
 the old gentleman had a perfect knowledge of the 
 French language, (not by any means so common 
 an accomplishment in the army in those days as 
 it is now,) gave him command of a large brigade 
 of militia, and, like other men who rise to great- 
 ness, his friends and followers shared his good 
 fortune, for a subaltern of our regiment who had 
 come out in another ship and joined us at Mont- 
 real, was appointed as his Brigade Major ; and I 
 was exalted to the dignity of Principal Medical 
 Officer to his command, and we proceeded to La- 
 chine, the head-quarters of the advance, and 
 where it had been determined to make the stand, 
 in order to cover Montreal, the great commercial 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR IS 
 
 emporium of the Canadas, and which, moreover, 
 was the avowed object of the American attack. 
 
 Our force here presented rather a motley ap- 
 pearance ; besides a small number of the line 
 consisting chiefly of detachments, there was a 
 considerable body of sailors and marines ; the 
 former made tolerable Artillery men, and the 
 latter had, I would say, even a more serviceable 
 appearance than an equal body of the line, aver- 
 age it throughout the army. 
 
 The fact is that during the war the marines 
 had the best recruits that entered the army. The 
 reason of this, as explained to me by an intel- 
 ligent non-commissioned officer of that corps, 
 was, that whereas a soldier of the line, returning 
 on furlough to his native village, had barely 
 enough of money to pay his travelling expenses, 
 and support him while there, and even that with 
 a strict attention to economy, the marine, on the 
 other hand, on returning from a three years' 
 cruise, had all the surplus pay and prize money 
 of that period placed in his hands before he start- 
 ed, and this, with his pay going on at the same 
 rate as that of the soldier of the line, enabled 
 him to expend in a much more gentlemanly style 
 of profusion than the other. 
 
 The vulgar of all ranks are apt to form their 
 opinions of things rather from their results than 
 the causes of them, and hence they jump to the 
 conclusion that the marine service must be just 
 so much better than that of the line, as the one 
 has so much more money to spend on his return 
 home than the other. And hence, aspiring— or as 
 
l6 RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 our quarter master, Tom Sheridan, used to say 
 when recruiting sergeant, perspiring — young he- 
 roes, who resolve to gain a field marshal's baton 
 by commencing with a musket, preferred the am- 
 phibious path of the jolly to the exclusive^ terra- 
 queous one of the flat-foot. Besides these and our 
 friends the country militia, there were two corps 
 formed of the gentlemen of Montreal, one of artil- 
 lery and another of sharp-shooters. I think these 
 were in a perfect state of drill, and in their hand- 
 some new uniforms had a most imposing appear- 
 ance. But if their discipline was commendable, 
 their commissariat was beyond all praise. I v ong 
 lines of carts were to be seen bearing in casks 
 and hampers of the choicest wines, to say noth- 
 ing of the venison, turkeys, hams, and all other 
 esculents necessary to recruit their strength under 
 the fatigues of war. With them the Indian found 
 a profitable market for his game, and the fisher- 
 man for his fish. There can be little doubt that 
 a gourmand would greatly prefer the comfort of 
 dining with a mess of privates of these distin- 
 guished corps to the honour and glory of being 
 half starved (of which he ran no small risk) at 
 the table of the Governor General himself. Such 
 a force opposed to an equal number of regulars, 
 it may be said, was no very hopeful prospect for 
 defending a country. But there are many things 
 which, when taken into consideration, wffl show 
 that the balance was not so very much against 
 them as at first sight may appear. Men who are 
 fighting for their homes and friends, and almost 
 in sight of their wives and children, have an ad^ 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 17 
 
 ditional incentive over those who fight for pay 
 and glory. Again, the enemy to attack them 
 had to land from a rapid, a thing which precludes 
 regularity under any circumstances, and they 
 would not be rendered more cool by a heavy fire 
 of artillery while they were yawning and whirl- 
 ing in the current. They must have landed in 
 confusion, and would be attacked before they 
 could form, and should they get over all this, there 
 was a plateau of land in the rear ascended by a 
 high steep bank, which, in tolerable hands, could 
 neither be carried nor turned. Add to all this, 
 that the American regulars, if equal, were not 
 superior to our troops in drill and discipline, the 
 great majority of them having been enlisted for 
 a period too short to form a soldier, under the 
 most favorable circumstances. And much even 
 of that short time had been consumed in 
 long and harassing marches through an unsettled 
 country that could not supply the commissariat, 
 and exposed to fatigue and privation that was 
 rapidly spreading disease among them ; dispirited 
 too by recent defeat, with a constantly increas- 
 ing force hanging on their rear. If they even had 
 forced us at Lachine, they must have done it at 
 an enormous loss. In their advance also towards 
 Montreal, they must have fought every inch of 
 the way, harrassed in front, flank and in rear, 
 and their army so diminished that they could not 
 hold Montreal if they had it. On the whole, 
 therefore, — any reflections on the conduct of Gen- 
 eral Wilkinson by those great military critics, the 
 editors of American newspapers, to the contrary 
 
l8 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 notwithstanding, — every soldier will admit, that 
 in withdrawing with a comparatively unbroken 
 army to his intrenchment on Salmon River, the 
 American commander did the very wisest thing 
 that under all the circumstances he could have 
 done. What the event of a battle might have 
 been it is now impossible to say, for on this 
 ground it was fated we were to show our devo- 
 tion to our king and country at a cheaper rate, 
 for the news of the battle of Chrysler's Farm, 
 and the subsequent retreat of the Americans 
 across the river, blighted all our hopes of laurels 
 for this turn. 
 
 This was a very brilliant little affair. Colonel 
 Morrison of the 89th Regiment, was sent by 
 General de Rotenburg, with a small corp amount- 
 ing in all to 820 men, Regulars, Militia and In- 
 dians, to watch the motions of the American 
 army, when it broke up from Grenadier Island, 
 near Kingston, and to hang on and harass their 
 rear. This was done so effectually that General 
 Covington was detached with a body at least 
 three times our number to drive them back. 
 Morrison retired till he came to a spot he had 
 selected on his downward march, and there gave 
 them battle. Luckily for us, the first volley we 
 fired, killed General Covington, who must have 
 been a brave fine fellow ; the officer succeeding 
 him brought his undisciplined levies too near 
 our well-drilled troops before he deployed, and 
 in attempting to do so, got thrown into confu- 
 sion, thus giving our artillery and gun-boats an 
 opportunity of committing dreadful slaughter 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 19 
 
 among their confused and huddled masses. They 
 rallied, however, again, but were driven off by 
 the bayonet ; but all this cost us dear, for we 
 were too much weakened to follow up our vic- 
 tory. They retired therefore in comparative 
 safety to about seven miles above the village of 
 Cornwall, where they crossed the river without 
 loss, save from a body of Highland militia, from 
 Glengarry, who made a sudden attack on their 
 cavalry while embarking, and by firing into the 
 boats by which they were swimming over their 
 horses, made them let go their bridles, and the 
 animals swimming to the shore, were seized upon 
 by Donald, who thus came into action a foot 
 soldier, and went out of it a dragoon, no doubt, 
 like his countryman, sorely " taight wi' ta peast 1 
 on his journey home.* The enemy then took up 
 a position and fortified a camp, where they re- 
 mained during the winter, and when preparations 
 were made to drive them out of it in the spring, 
 they suddenly abandoned their position, leaving 
 behind them their stores and baggage, and re- 
 treated, followed by our forces, as far as the vil- 
 lage of Malone, in the State of New York. Thus 
 ended the "partumeius mons" of the only effi- 
 cient invasion of Canada during the war. The 
 fact is, the Americans were deceived in all their 
 schemes of conquest in Canada ; the disaffected 
 then as now were the loudest in their clamour, 
 and a belief obtained among the Americans that 
 they had only to display their colours to have the 
 whole population flock to them. But the reverse 
 of this was the case. They found themselves in 
 
20 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 a country so decidedly hostile, that their re- 
 treating ranks were thinned by the peasantry fir- 
 ing on them from behind fences and stumps; and 
 it was evident that every man they met was an 
 enemy. The militia at Lachine, after being duly 
 thanked for their services, were sent home, and 
 the regulars went into winter quarters ; the sail- 
 ors and marines to Kingston — and we, having 
 enjoyed our newly acquired dignities for a few 
 days, set off to join our regiment then quartered 
 at Fort Wellington, a clumsy, ill-constructed un- 
 flanked redoubt, close to which now stands the 
 large and populous village of Prescott, then con- 
 sisting of five houses, three of which were unfin- 
 ished. The journey was a most wretched one. 
 The month of November being far advanced, rain 
 and sleet poured down in torrents — the roads at 
 no season good, were now barely fordable, so 
 that we found it the easiest way to let our 
 waggon go on with our baggage, and walk 
 through the fields, and that too, though at every 
 two hundred yards, or oftener, we had to scram- 
 ble over a rail fence, six feet high ; sometimes we 
 got a lift in a boat, sometimes we were dragged 
 by main force in a waggon through the deep 
 mud, in which it was hard to say whether the 
 peril of upsetting or drowning was the most im- 
 minent. Sometimes we marched ; but all that 
 could be said of any mode of travel was, that it 
 was but a variety of the disagreeable ; so, as 
 there was no glory to be gained in such a service, 
 I was anything but sorry when I learned that I 
 was to halt for some time at a snug, comfort- 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 21 
 
 able, warm, cleanly, Dutch farm house, to take 
 charge of the wounded who had suffered in the 
 action of Chrysler's Farm. 
 
 Washington Irving is the only describer of your 
 "American Teutonic Race," and this, my debut 
 in the New World, put me down in the midst of 
 that worthy people as unsophisticated as possi- 
 ble. It is refreshing, as his little Lordship of 
 Craigcrook used to say, in this land where every 
 man is a philosopher, and talks of government 
 as if he had been bred at the feet of Machiavel, 
 to meet with a specimen of genuine simplicity, 
 perfectly aware of his own ignorance in matters 
 which in no way concern him. Your Dutchman 
 is the most unchangeable of all human beings, 
 " Caelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare 
 currunt" applies with peculiar force to the Ba- 
 tavian in every clime on the face of the globe. 
 In America, at the Cape of Good Hope, in the 
 congenial marshes of Java, in the West Indies, 
 and at Chinsurhae on the banks of the Ganges, 
 the transmarine Hollander is always the same 
 as in his own native mud of the dams and dykes 
 of Holland,— the same in his house, his dress, his 
 voracious and omniverous appetite, his thrift and 
 his cleanliness. 
 
 Among these good, kind, simple people, I spent 
 a month or six weeks very pleasantly. Loyal 
 and warmly attached to the British Crown, they 
 followed our standard in the Revolutionary War, 
 and obtained from government settlements in 
 Canada when driven from their homes on the 
 banks of the Hudson. From what I could learn 
 
22 RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 from them, the Americans had persecuted them 
 and their families with a rancour they displayed 
 to no other race of mankind. When prisoners 
 were taken in action, while the British were 
 treated by them with respect, and even with 
 kindness, the Dutch were deliberately murdered in 
 cold blood. Men without arms in their hands, 
 but suspected of favouring the British cause, were 
 shot before their own doors, or hanged on the 
 apple trees of their own orchards, in presence of 
 their wives and families, who without regard to 
 age or sex, were turned from their homes with- 
 out remorse or pity. And one old dame told me 
 that she was for six weeks in the woods between 
 Utica and Niagara, unaccompanied by any one 
 but her two infant children, looking for her hus- 
 band, who she luckily found in the fort of the 
 latter place ; at one time she and her poor babes 
 must have perished from hunger, but for some 
 Mohawk Indians, who came up and delivered 
 them, and conducted them to the Fort. The 
 Dutch themselves ascribe this very different 
 treatment of the two races to the fear of the 
 Americans that the British would retaliate in 
 case they were ill used, wdiile the Dutch could 
 not. 
 
 This, however, could not have been the case, 
 for had the Americans feared vengeance on the 
 part of the British for the wrongs they inflicted 
 on their countrymen, they must have equally 
 feared that they would not quietly submit to 
 injuries inflicted on men who were their loyal and 
 faithful fellow subjects. I therefore suspect, that, 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 23 
 
 so far as their statements were correct, and they 
 must have been so in the main, for I have the 
 same stories from the Dutch of the Niagara Dis- 
 trict who had no communication whatever with 
 their compatriots of Williamsburg, and though 
 we must allow great latitude for exaggeration in 
 a people who were, no doubt, deeply injured, and 
 had been brooding over their wrongs for a period 
 of upwards of thirty years, during all which 
 time their wrath had gathered force as it went, 
 and their stories having no one to contradict 
 them, must have increased with each subsequent 
 narrator, till they had obtained all the credence 
 of time-honoured truth— allowing for all this, but 
 insisting that the stories had a strong founda- 
 tion in fact, the rigor of their persecution must 
 be attributed to another feeling, and must have, 
 I should think, arisen from this, that the Amer- 
 icans considered that a British subject born with- 
 in the realm, and fighting for what he believed to 
 be the rights of his country, was only doing 
 what they themselves were doing ; whereas, a 
 North American born, whatever his extraction, 
 fighting against what they considered the rights 
 of the people of North America, was a traitor 
 and an apostate, an enemy to the cause of free- 
 dom from innate depravity, and therefore, like a 
 noxious animal, was lawfully to be destroyed, 
 "per fas et nefas." However this may be, I 
 found their hatred to the Americans was deep 
 rooted and hearty, and their kindness to us and 
 to our wounded, (for I never trusted them near 
 the American wounded,) in proportion strong and 
 
24 RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 unceasing ; my only difficulty with them was to 
 prevent them cramming my patients with all 
 manner of Dutch dainties, for their ideas of prac- 
 tice being Batavian, they affirmed that there was 
 infinitely greater danger from inanition then re- 
 pletion, and that strength must come from nour- 
 ishment. "Unless you give de wounded man 
 plenty to eat and drink it is quite certain he 
 can never get through." 
 
 Killing with kindness is the commonest cause 
 of death I am aware of, and it is very remiss in 
 the faculty, that it has never yet found a place 
 in the periodical mortuary reports which they 
 publish in great cities in a tabular form — this 
 ought to be amended. Au teste — I was very 
 comfortable, for, while I remained under the hos- 
 pitable roof of my friend old Cobus,I had an upper 
 room for my sleeping apartment, and the show 
 room of the establishment for my sitting parlor, 
 an honour and preferment which nobody of less 
 rank them an actual line officer of the " riglars 1 * 
 could have presumed to aspire to ; to the rest of 
 mankind it was shut and sealed, saving on high 
 days and holidays. This sacred chamber was 
 furnished and decorated in the purest and most 
 classical style of Dutch taste, the whole wood- 
 work, and that included floor, walls and ceiling, 
 were sedulously washed once a week with hot 
 water and soap, vigorously applied with a scrub- 
 bing brush. The floor was nicely sanded, and 
 the walls decorated with a tapestry of innumer- 
 able home-spun petticoats, evidently never ap- 
 plied to any other (I won't say meaner) purpose, 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 25 
 
 declaring at once the wealth and housewifery of 
 the gude vrow. On the shelf that ran round the 
 whole room, were exhibited the holiday crockery 
 of the establishment, bright and shining, inter- 
 spersed with pewter spoons, which were easily 
 mistaken for silver from the excessive brightness 
 of their polish. And to conclude the description 
 of my comforts, I had for breakfast and dinner a 
 variety and profusion of meat, fish, eggs, cakes 
 and preserves, that might have satisfied the gre- 
 nadier company of the Regiment. 
 
 On the Saturday morning (for this was the 
 grand cleansing day) I never went forth to visit 
 my hospital without taking my fowling piece in 
 my hand, and made a point of never returning 
 until sunset, as during the intervening period no 
 animal not amphibious could possibly have exist- 
 ed in the domicile ; after leaving them I never 
 passed their door on the line of march without 
 passing an hour or two with my old friends, and 
 on such occasions I used to be honoured with the 
 chaste salute of the worthy old dame, which was 
 followed by my going through the same cere- 
 mony, to a strapping beauty, her niece, who was 
 "comely to be seen," and in stature rather ex- 
 ceeded myself, though I stand six feet in my 
 stocking soles. An irreverent Irish subaltern of 
 ours impiously likened the decorous and fraternal 
 salute with which I greeted her, to the "slap of a 
 wet brogue against a barn door;" and the angel 
 who in her innocence bestowed that civility on 
 me, was known by my brother officers, who had 
 
26 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 no platonism in their souls, as "The Doctor's 
 Sylph." 
 
 From the end of the first few weeks that I re- 
 mained here my patients gradually began to 
 diminish,— some died, and these I buried— some 
 recovered by the remedies employed, or spite of 
 them, and these I forwarded or carried with me 
 to join the Regiment,— and others who from loss 
 of limbs or of the use of them, might be consid- 
 ered as permanently rendered " hots de combat" 
 1 sent by easy stages to Montreal General Hospi- 
 tal, thence in the spring to be removed to Eng- 
 land as occasion offered, thence to enjoy the hon- 
 ours and emoluments of a Chelsea Pension. The 
 few that remained unfit to be removed I commit- 
 ted to the charge of an Hospital Mate, and pro- 
 ceeded with all convenient speed to join the head- 
 quarters of my Regiment. 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 27 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Cockneys of Iyondon, Muscadines of Paris, 
 I pray you ponder, what a pastime war is." 
 
 — Byron. 
 
 I joined my regiment at Fort Wellington, and 
 a fine jovial unsophisticated set of "wild tremen- 
 dous Irishmen" I found my brother officers to be. 
 To do them justice (and I was upwards of four 
 years with them) a more honest-hearted set of 
 fellows never met round a mess table. No private 
 family ever lived in more concord or unanimity 
 than did "Our Mess." 
 
 Irishmen though they mostly were, they never 
 quarrelled among themselves. They sometimes 
 fought, to be sure, with strangers, but never in 
 the Regiment, though we rarely went to bed 
 without a respectable quorum of them getting a 
 leetle to the lee side of sobriety. 
 
 "Tempora mutantur," says Horace, but I very 
 much doubt if "nos" (that is such as are alive of 
 ( nos') "mutamur in illis." The Army is very 
 different from what it was in my day— sadly 
 changed indeed! It will hardly be believed, but 
 I have dined with officers who, after drinking a 
 few glasses of wine, called for their coffee. If 
 Waterloo was to fight over again, no rational 
 
28 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 man can suppose that we would gain it after 
 such symptoms of degeneracy. Such lady-like 
 gentlemen would certainly take out vinaigrettes 
 and scream at a charge of the Old Guard, and be 
 horrified at the sight of a set of grim-looking 
 Frenchmen, all grin and gash, whisker and mous- 
 tache. 
 
 I was not, however, allowed to enjoy the fes- 
 tivities of Fort Wellington, such as they were. 
 The enemy being extended along the line of the 
 right bank of the St. Lawrence, and the Lake of 
 the Thousand Islands, it was necessary that we 
 also should extend and occupy points that might 
 enable us to keep up a communication, and main- 
 tain a correspondence with our rear. Besides it 
 was considered highly expedient and necessary, 
 that small bodies of the line should be stationed 
 in defensible positions, to form a nucleus, in case 
 of invasion, for the Indians and Militia to rally 
 round and form upon. Accordingly, a garrison 
 had to be maintained in a block-house in the 
 woods of Gananoque, between Brockville and 
 Kingston, and our Grenadier Company being or- 
 dered for that service, I was detached to accom- 
 pany them. A block-house is a most convenient 
 and easily constructed fort in a new country. 
 The lower story is strongly built of stone, and 
 the upper, which overhangs it about eighteen 
 inches, (so that you can fire from above along 
 the wall without being exposed,) is built of logs 
 about a foot square. Both stories are pierced 
 with loop-holes for musquetry, and in the upper 
 are four portholes, to which are fitted four 24- 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 29 
 
 pounder carronades, mounted naval fashion, the 
 whole being surrounded with a strong loop-holed 
 and flanked stoccade, and this makes a very fair 
 protection for an inferior force, against a supe- 
 rior who are unprovided with a battering train, 
 which of course in a few rounds would knock it 
 to splinters. 
 
 Kxcept in the expectation of a sudden attack, 
 the officers were permitted to sleep out of the 
 block-house, and a small unfinished house was 
 taken for their residence. The captain and senior 
 lieutenant being, as Bardolph hath it, better ac- 
 commodated than with wives, we, that is the 
 junior lieutenant and myself, gave up our share 
 of the quarters to them, and established our- 
 selves in what had been a blacksmith's shop, for 
 our winter quarters. In the ante-room to this 
 enviable abode, a jobbing tailor had formed his 
 shop-board, and his rags and shapings proved 
 highly useful in caulking its seams against the 
 wind. By means of a roaring fire kept up on the 
 forge, and a stove in the outer room, we man- 
 aged to keep ourselves tolerably comfortable 
 during an unusually rigorous winter ; and it be- 
 ing on the road side, and a halting station in 
 the woods, we were often visited by friends com- 
 ing or going, who partook with great gout of onr 
 frozen beef— which had to be cut into steaks with 
 a hand-saw. Being on the banks of a fine stream, 
 we never were at loss for ducks, and in the sur- 
 rounding pine woods the partridges were abund- 
 ant, and the Indians brought us venison in ex- 
 change for rum, so that we had at least a plenti- 
 
30 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 ful, if not an elegant table, and we were enabled 
 to pass the winter nights as pleasantly over our 
 ration rum as ever I did in a place with much 
 more splendid "appliances and means to boot." 
 
 We passed the remainder of the winter as offi- 
 cers are obliged to do in country quarters. We 
 shot, we lounged, we walked and did all the flir- 
 tation that the neighborhood of a mill, a shop, a 
 tavern, with two farm houses within a reason- 
 able forenoon's walk, could afford. We were de- 
 prived, however, of the luxury of spitting over a 
 bridge, which Dr. Johnston says is the principal 
 amusement of officers in country quarters, for 
 though we had a bridge close at hand, the stream 
 beneath it was frozen. Early in spring we were 
 relieved by two companies of another Regiment, 
 and having received orders to join, we joined ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 I had the good fortune to be quartered with 
 two companies of my Regiment at the then in- 
 significant village of Cornwall. It is now a flour- 
 ishing town, and sends a Member to the Provin- 
 cial Parliament, though it then did not contain 
 more than twenty houses. Here we found our- 
 selves in very agreeable society, composed prin- 
 cipally of old officers of the revolutionary war, 
 who had obtained grants of land in this neigh- 
 bourhood, and ha.dsettled down, as we say in this 
 part of the country and its neighbourhood, with 
 their families. An affectation of style, and set 
 entertainments that follow so rapidly the foot- 
 steps of wealth, were then and there unknown, 
 and we immediately became on the best possible 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 3 I 
 
 terms with the highest circles (for these exist in 
 all societies, and the smaller the society, the 
 more distinctly is the circle defined). We walked 
 into their houses as if they had been our own, 
 and no apology was offered, though these were 
 found in such a litter as washing or scrubbing 
 day necessarily implied. The old gentlemen when 
 in town came to Our Mess, and when they had 
 imbibed a sufficient quantity of port, they regaled 
 us with toughish yarns of their military doings 
 during the revolutionary war. And when a tea- 
 drinking party called a sufficient number of the 
 aristocracy together, an extemporaneous dance 
 was got up, a muffled drum and fife furnishing 
 the orchestra. 
 
 Towards the end of June our two companies 
 got the route to join headquarters, the Regiment 
 being ordered to the Niagara frontier. But 
 though the troops were relieved, I was not, but 
 ordered to remain till some one should arrive to 
 fill my place, and in the interval between that 
 and my departure a Field Officer, who was sent 
 to command the Militia of the district, arrived. 
 
 He was an old acquaintance of mine, and a real 
 good fellow. He had highly distinguished himself 
 during the war, particularly at the storming of 
 Ogdensburg, where he commanded. He was of 
 Highland extraction, and though he had not the 
 misfortune to be born in that country, he had, 
 by means of the instructions of a Celtic moon- 
 shee, (as they say in Bengal,) acquired enough of 
 their language to hammer out a translation of a 
 verse or two of the Gaelic Bible, with nearly as 
 
32 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 much facility as a boy in the first year of the 
 Grammar School would an equal quantity of his 
 Cordery. To all these good gifts he added the 
 advantage of being of the Catholic persuasion, 
 which rendered him the most proper person that 
 could have been selected to take charge of a dis- 
 trict the chief part of whose Militia were High- 
 landers, Catholics, and soldiers, or the sons of 
 soldiers. 
 
 I have never met with him since the end of the 
 war, though I might have seen him in Edinburgh 
 at the King's visit ; but who could be expected 
 to recognize a respectable Field Officer of Light 
 Infantry, masquerading, disguised for the first 
 time in his life in a kilt, and forming a joint in 
 the tail of the chief of his barbarous clan ? 
 
 It struck this gentleman that supplies of fresh 
 provisions might be got from the American side, 
 and accordingly he sent emissaries over the river, 
 and the result justified the correctness of his 
 views. 
 
 While sitting after dinner one day tete-ci-tete 
 with the Colonel, his servant announced that a 
 gentleman wanted to see him. As the word gen- 
 tleman on this side of the Atlantic conveys no 
 idea of either high birth or high breeding}, nor 
 even of a clean shirt, or a whole coat, my friend 
 demanded what kind of a gentleman, — as, like a 
 sensible man as he was, he did not wish to be 
 interrupted in the pleasant occupation of dis- 
 cussing his wine and listening to my agreeable 
 conversation, by a gentleman who possibly might 
 ask him if he wished to buy any eggs, as many 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 33 
 
 species of the genus gentleman on this side of the 
 herring pond might possibly deem a good and 
 sufficient reason for intruding on his privacy. 
 His servant said he believed he must be a kind 
 of Yankee gentleman, for he wore his hat in the 
 parlor, and spit on the carpet. The causa scien- 
 tiae, as the lawyers say, seemed conclusive to 
 my Commandant, for he was ordered to be ad- 
 mitted, and the Colonel, telling me that he sus- 
 pected this must be one of his beef customers, re- 
 quested I would not leave the room, as he wish- 
 ed a witness to the bargain he was about to 
 make. 
 
 Accordingly, there entered a tall, good-looking, 
 middle-aged man, dressed in a blue something, 
 that might have been a cross between a surtout 
 and a great coat. He was invited to sit down, 
 and fill his glass, when the following dialogue 
 took place : 
 
 Yankee. — I'm Major of Vermont State, 
 
 and I would like to speak to the Colonel in priv- 
 ate, I guess, on particular business. 
 
 Colonel. — Anything you may have to say to 
 me, Sir, may be said with perfect safety in pres- 
 ence of this gentleman. 
 
 Major. — I'm a little in the smuggling line, I 
 reckon. 
 
 Colonel. — Aye, and pray what have you smug- 
 gled ? 
 
 Major. — Kettle, (cattle,) I reckon. I heerd that 
 the Colonel wanted some very bad, so I just 
 brought a hundred on 'em across at St. Regis, as 
 fine critters, Colonel, as ever had hair on 'em. 
 
34 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 So I drove them right up; the Colonel can look 
 
 at 'em hisself — they are right at the door here. 
 
 Colonel. — Well, what price do you ask for 
 them? 
 
 Major. — Well, Colonel I expect about the same 
 as other folks gets, I conclude. 
 
 Colonel. — That is but reasonable, and you shall 
 have it. 
 
 The Commissary of the Post was sent for, and 
 having been previously warned not to be very 
 scrupulous in inspecting the drove, as it was of 
 infinitely more importance to get the army sup- 
 plied than to obtain them at the very lowest rate 
 per head, he soon returned with a bag of half 
 eagles, and paid the Major the sum demanded. 
 The latter, after carefully counting the coin, re- 
 turned it into the canvas bag, and opening his 
 coat displayed inside the breast of it, a pocket 
 about the size of a haversack, into which he 
 dropped his treasure, and then deliberately but^ 
 toning it up from the bottom to the throat, he 
 filled and drank a glass of wine, to our good 
 healths ; adding, "Well, Colonel, I must say you 
 are a leetle the genteelest man to deal with ever 
 I met with, and I'll tell all my friends how hand- 
 some you behaved to me ; and I'm glad of it for 
 their sakes as well as my own, for jist as I was 
 fixing to start from St. Regis, my friend Colonel 
 
 arrived with three hundred head more. 
 
 The kettle arnt his'n ; they belong to his father, 
 who is our Senator. They do say that it is 
 wrong to supply an innimy. and I think so too ; 
 but I don't call that man my innimy who buys 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 35 
 
 what I have to sell, and gives a genteel price for 
 it. We have worse innimies than you Britishers. 
 So I hope the Colonel will behave all the same 
 as well to them as he has done to me; but there 
 was no harm in having the first of the market, 
 vou know, Colonel." So with a duck that was 
 intended for a bow, and a knowing grin that 
 that seemed to say, "It was just as safe to se- 
 cure my money before giving you this piece of 
 information," he took his leave and departed, evi- 
 dently much pleased with the success of his ne- 
 gotiation. 
 
 At this time the expense of carrying on the 
 war was enormous. Canada, so far from being 
 able to supply an army and navy with the pro- 
 visions required, was (as a great many of her 
 effective population were employed in the trans- 
 port of military and naval stores,) not fit to 
 supply her own wants, and it was essential to 
 secure supplies from wherever they could be got 
 soonest and cheapest. Troops acting on the Ni- 
 agara frontier. 1,000 miles from the ocean, were 
 fed with flour the produce of England, and pork 
 and beef from Cork, which, with the waste in- 
 separable from a state of war, the expense and 
 accidents to which a long voyage expose them, 
 and the enormous cost of internal conveyance, at 
 least doubled the quantity required, and render- 
 ed the price of them at least ten times their or- 
 iginal cost. Not only provisions, but every kind 
 of Military and Naval Stores, every bolt of can- 
 vas, every rope yarn, as well as the header ar- 
 ticles of guns, shot, cables, anchors, and all the 
 
36 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 numerous etceteras for furnishing a large squad- 
 ron, arming forts, supplying arms for the militia 
 and the line, had to be brought from Montreal 
 to Kingston, a distance of nearly 200 miles, by 
 land in winter, and in summer by flat-bottomed 
 boats, which had to tow up the rapids, and sail 
 up the still parts of the river, (in many places 
 not a mile in breadth, between the British and 
 American shores,) exposed to the shot of the 
 enemy without any protection ; for with the 
 small body of troops we had in the country, it 
 was utterly impossible that we could detach a 
 force sufficient to protect the numerous brigades 
 of boats that were daily proceeding up the river, 
 and we must have been utterly undone, had not 
 the ignorance and inertness of the enemy saved 
 us. Had they stationed four field guns, covered 
 by a corps of riflemen, on the banks of the St. 
 Lawrence, they could have cut off our supplies 
 without risking one man. As it was we had only 
 to station a small party at every fifty miles, to 
 be ready to act in case of alarm ; but fortunate- 
 ly for us, they rarely or never troubled us. If 
 they had done so with any kind of spirit, we 
 must have abandoned Upper Canada, Kingston 
 and the fleet on Ontario included, and leaving it 
 to its fate, confined ourselves to the defence of 
 such part of the Lower Province as came within 
 the range of our own empire, the sea. 
 
 I would do gross injustice to my reader, no 
 less than to myself, were I to quit Cornwall 
 without mentioning a most worthy personage, 
 who, though in a humble station, was one of the 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 37 
 
 best and most original characters I ever met 
 with in my progress through life. This was no 
 other than my worthy hostess, of the principal 
 log hotel, Peggy Bruce. If you could conceive 
 Meg Dodds an Irish instead of a Scotch woman, 
 you would have a lively conception of Peggy. 
 She possessed all the virtues of her prototype, all 
 her culinary talents, all her caprice with guests 
 she did not take a fancy for, and all powers, of- 
 fensive or defensive, by tongue or broom, as the 
 case in hand rendered the one or the other more 
 expedient. 
 
 Peggy was the daughter of a respectable Irish 
 farmer, and had made a runaway match with a 
 handsome young Scotch sergeant. She had ac- 
 companied her husband through the various cam- 
 paigns of the revolutionary war, and at the 
 peace, his regiment being disbanded, they set up 
 a small public house, which, when I knew her as 
 a widow, she still kept. The sign was a long 
 board, decorated by a very formidable likeness of 
 St. Andrew at the one end, and St. Patrick at 
 the other, being the patron saints of the high 
 contracting parties over whose domicile they 
 presided, and the whole surrounded by a splendid 
 wreath of thistles and shamrocks. 
 
 Bred in the army, she still retained her old 
 military predeliction, and a scarlet coat was the 
 best recommendation to her good offices. Civi- 
 lians of whatever rank she deemed an inferior 
 class of the human race, and it would have been 
 a hard task to have convinced her that the Lord 
 
38 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Chancellor was equal in dignity or station to a 
 Captain of Dragoons. 
 
 It was my luck, (good or bad as the reader 
 may be inclined to determine,) to be a prodigious 
 favourite with the old lady; but even favour with 
 the ladies has its drawbacks and inconveniences, 
 and one of these with me was being dragged to 
 the bedside of every man, woman and child who 
 was taken ill in or about the village. At first I 
 remonstrated against my being appointed physi- 
 cian-extraordinary to the whole parish, with 
 which I was in no way connected ; but Peggy 
 found an argument which, as it seemed perfectly 
 satisfactory to herself, had to content me. "What 
 
 the d 1 does the king pay you for, if you are 
 
 not to attend to his subjects when they require 
 your assistance ?" 
 
 I once, and only once, outwitted her. She woke 
 me out of a sound sleep a little after midnight, 
 to go and see one of her patients. Having un- 
 dergone great fatigue the day before, I felt very 
 unwilling to get up. At first I meditated a flat 
 refusal, but I could see with half a glance, that 
 she anticipated my objections, for I saw her eye 
 fix itself on a large ewer of water in the basin 
 stand, and I knew her too well for a moment to 
 suppose that she would hesitate to call in the 
 aid of the pure element to enforce her arguments. 
 So I feigned compliance, but pleaded the impos- 
 sibility of my getting up, while there was a lady 
 in the room. This appeared only reasonable, so 
 she lit my candle and withdrew to the kitchen 
 fire, while I was at my toilet. Her back was no 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 39 
 
 sooner turned, than I rose, double-locked and 
 bolted the door, and retired again to rest, leav- 
 ing her to storm in the passage, and ultimately 
 to knock up one of the village doctors, whose 
 skill she was well persuaded was immeasurably 
 inferior to any Army medical man who wore His 
 Majesty's uniform. But though I chuckled at my 
 success at the time, I had to be most wary how 
 I approached her, and many days elapsed before 
 I ventured to come within broom's length of her. 
 At last I appeased her wrath by promising never 
 "in like case to offend," and so obtained her for- 
 giveness, and was once more taken into favour ; 
 but Peggy was too old a soldier to be taken in 
 twice, or to trust to the promise of a sleepy man 
 that he would get up. After this, when she re- 
 quired my services, she would listen to no apolo- 
 gy on the score of modesty, but placing her lan- 
 tern on the table, waited patiently till I was 
 dressed, when tucking up her gown through her 
 pocketholes and taking my arm, away we pad- 
 dled through the mud in company. 
 
 After reaching the house of the patient, and 
 after the wife and daughters had been duly scold- 
 ed for their neglect in not calling her in sooner, 
 we entered into consultation, which like many 
 other medical consultations, generally ended in a 
 difference of opinion. To a military surgeon, 
 much sooner than to any other surgeon, 
 there were certain great leading principles m the 
 healing art, to all impugning of which Peggy was 
 flint and adamant and when these were mooted 
 I much question if she would have succumbed to 
 
40 RECOLLECTIONS DF 
 
 even the Director General of the Army Medical 
 Board himself. 
 
 At the head of her medical dicta was that it 
 was essential to "support the strength." That 
 was to cram the patient with every kind of food 
 that by entreaty or importunity he could be pre- 
 vailed upon to swallow, (a practice by the way 
 of more learned practitioners than Peggy.) A 
 hot bath with herbs infused in it was another 
 favourite remedy, and on this we were more at 
 one, for the bath would most likely do good, and 
 the herbs no harm. Her concluding act at the 
 breaking up of the consultation was generally to 
 dive into the recesses of a pair of pockets of the 
 size and shape of saddle bags, from which, among 
 other miscellaneous contents, would she fish up a 
 couple of bottles of wine which she deemed might 
 be useful to the patient. After we had finished 
 business I escorted the old lady home, where 
 there was always something comfortable kept 
 warm for supper, which when we had discussed 
 together, with something of a stiffish horn of hot 
 brandy and water, we departed to our respective 
 dormitories. 
 
 Peggy, like many of her country, possessed a 
 keen vein of sarcastic humor, which often made 
 her both feared and respected. A Colonel, as 
 good a man, and as brave a soldier as ever drew 
 a sword, but too much of a martinet to be a fa- 
 vourite with the militia of whom he was Inspect- 
 ing Field Officer, received a command in 'a divi- 
 sion that was then going on actual service. Peg- 
 gy, who respected his military talents at least 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 41 
 
 as much as she disliked his hauteur, meeting him 
 the day before his departure, addressed him with 
 — "Och ! Colonel dear, and are ye going to lave 
 us — sure there will be many a dry eye in the 
 town the day you quit it." When the American 
 Army, under Wilkinson, were coming down the 
 St. I,awrence, a company of Glengarry Militia 
 were placed at Cornwall to watch their move- 
 ments, ajnd act as might be most expedient. 
 The Captain of the band was named John Mc- 
 Donald, a very good and highly respectable name, 
 but of no earthly use to distinguish a Glengarry 
 man, as there were some hundreds in that part 
 of the world — nor would the prefix of his mili- 
 tary rank much mend the matter, as there are 
 probably some score Captain John McDonalds. 
 In this emergency therefore, a soubriquet be- 
 comes indispensable. This Captain John had in 
 his youth served in the revolutionary war as a 
 corporal, in the same brigade as Peggy's hus- 
 band, therefore they were very old friends, and to 
 distinguish him from' the clan she named him 
 Captain Corporal John. When it was known 
 that the invading army had abandoned the at- 
 tempt, and had crossed the river, the men, wisely 
 considering that their services were no longer re- 
 quired in Cornwall, and would be highly useful 
 on their farms, disbanded themselves during the 
 night without the formality of asking leave, so 
 that at morning parade only six appeared on the 
 ground. Such an unheard-of breach of military 
 discipline could not fail to excite the fierce indig- 
 nation of the worthy veteran ; accordingly he 
 
42 RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 vented his wrath in every oath, Gaelic or Eng- 
 lish, within the range of his vocabulary. Peggy, 
 who witnessed the scene from her window, con- 
 soled the incensed commander with "Och ! John, 
 dear, don't let the devil get so great a hould of 
 ye as to be blaspheming like a heathen in that 
 fearful way ; things are not so bad with you yet» 
 sure you have twice as many men under your 
 command as you had when I knew you first." 
 
 Having at last been relieved, I proceeded to 
 join on the Niagara frontier, and therefore march- 
 ed with a detachment of the Canadian Fencibles 
 to Kingston, where I was joined by a friend of 
 mine, an officer of the iooth, who was bound for 
 the same destination. We accordingly waited on 
 the Deputy Quarter Master General, and stated 
 the necessity of being furnished with land convey- 
 ance, as the battle which must decide the cam- 
 paign, was hourly expected ; but that gentleman 
 having newly acquired his dignity, it did not sit 
 easy upon him, and with great hauteur he flatly 
 refused us, and unless we chose to march it, 
 (about 200 miles,) we had no shift but to embark 
 in a batteau loaded with gunpowder, and rowed 
 by a party of De Watteville's regiment. This 
 gentleman, by the bye, afterwards distinguished 
 himself as a naturalist in Sir John Ross' first 
 Polar expedition, and as a most appropriate re- 
 ward had the honor to stand god-father to a non- 
 descript gull, which bears his name unto this, day. 
 
 In the batteau, therefore, we deposited our- 
 selves, and with six more in company proceeded 
 on our way, with such speed as a set of rowers, 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 43 
 
 who probably had never had an oar before in 
 their hands, could urge us. The wind though 
 light was ahead ; but when we got about six 
 hours distance from Kingston, which perhaps 
 might amount to eighteen or twenty miles, all 
 we could do was to make head-way against it, 
 and as it looked as if there would be more of it, 
 sooner than less, I (who, from my superior nau- 
 tical experience, having been born and bred in a 
 sea-port town and acquired considerable dexteri- 
 ty both in stealing boats and managing them 
 when stolen, was voted Commodore,) ordered 
 them under the lee of a little rocky island, and 
 carried their dangerous cargo about a hundred 
 yards from where we encamped, that is to say, 
 put the gunpowder at one end of the island and 
 ourselves at the other, hauled up the batteau., 
 lighted fires, and forming a camp of sails and 
 tarpaulins, waited the event. A squall did come 
 down the lake in very handsome style, embellish- 
 ed with a sufficiency of spindrift to make us 
 thankful that we were under the lee of a rock 
 and covered overhead. The squall subsided into 
 a good steady gale, accompanied by a sea that 
 made it utterly impossible that we could have 
 proceeded even if the wind had been as favourable 
 as it was the contrary ; we thus had the advan- 
 tage of enjoying two days of philosophical reflec- 
 tion on a rock in Lake Ontario. On the third it 
 began to moderate, and my comrade and I took 
 one of the empty batteaus with a strong party, 
 and made us directly in shore as we could, and 
 had the good fortune to land about twelfve miles 
 
44 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 above Kingston, determined to make our way on 
 horseback, coute qu'il coute. 
 
 Any one who has only seen the roads of Can- 
 ada in the present day, can form but a very in- 
 adequate idea of what they were then between 
 Kingston and Toronto ; for a considerable part 
 of the way we were literally up to our saddle- 
 flaps. In those days all the horses along the 
 roads were taken up for Government, and an 
 officer receiving the route gave the proprietor an 
 order for so many horses so many miles, and the 
 nearest Commissary paid it ; or he paid it, tak- 
 ing a receipt which, when he showed it to the 
 Commissary at the end of his journey, was re- 
 funded. We necessarily took the latter mode, see- 
 ing we had no route to show, and therefore paid 
 our way ourselves. The officer who accompanied 
 me being like myself a subaltern, we found 
 we uniformly got the worst horses, as Major A. 
 or Colonal B. or some other "person of worship" 
 was expected, and the best must necessarily be 
 kept for him. It struck me therefore that if 
 " Captain" was a good travelling name, "Gener- 
 al" must be a much better ; I proposed to my 
 companion that he should have the rank of Major 
 General "for the road only," and I volunteered 
 to act as Aide-de-camp. He liked the plan, but 
 objected that he was too young to look the char- 
 acter, but that as I had a more commanding and 
 dignified presence, I should do General and he 
 Aide-de-camp, and as we were dressed in our sur- 
 touts and forage caps, we were well aware that 
 we might easily pass with the uninitiated for any 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 
 
 45 
 
 rank we might think proper to assume. Accord- 
 ingly, when we approached a halt where we were 
 to change horses, he rode briskly forward and 
 began to call lustily about him, as "one having 
 authority," for horses, and pointing to a very 
 active, stout looking pair, peremptorily ordered 
 them to be brought out and saddled ; but the 
 man of the house excused himself by saying that 
 he "kept them horses for the sole use of Major B. 
 the Deputy Quarter Master General, and as he 
 had the conducting of the troops on the line of 
 march through which the road lay, and had it in 
 his power to put good jobs in his way, he was 
 not a man whom he could offend on slight 
 grounds." 
 
 "D n Major B !" exclaimed the irreverent 
 
 and indignant A.D.C. "Would you set his will, or 
 that of fifty like him, against the positive orders 
 of the great General D. who has been sent out 
 by the Duke of Wellington to instruct Sir Gor- 
 don Drummond how he is to conduct the cam- 
 paign ? Sir, if by your neglect he is too late for 
 the battle that must soon be fought, you will be 
 answerable for it, and then hanging on your own 
 sign-post is the very mildest punishment you can 
 expect ; it is the way we always settled such 
 matters in Spain." To this argument there could 
 be no answer, so the horses were led out just as 
 I came up— my A.D.C. with his hat in his hand 
 holding my stirrup as I mounted. This to those 
 who knew anything about the service would have 
 appeared a little de trap ; but to the uninitiated, 
 of whom mine host was one, it only served to in- 
 
46 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 spire him with the higher respect for the great 
 man his horse was about to have the honour to 
 carry. 
 
 So far things went on as well as could have 
 been wished ; but in turning a corner in a young 
 pine wood about a mile from where we had start- 
 ed, who should we meet full in the face but Major 
 B., (commonly called Beau B.) who was also a 
 captain in my own regiment. After the first sal- 
 utation he expressed his surprise that the man 
 should have given me his horses. I assured him 
 that I should not have got them, but that he had 
 a much better pair for him. This pacified him, 
 so after a few minutes' conversation, (the A.D. 
 C. and guide keeping a respectful distance,) I 
 told him I had been made a general since I last 
 saw him. He did not see the point of the joke 
 at the time, but on taking leave he took off his 
 hat and bowing till his well brushed and perfum- 
 ed locks mixed with the hair of his horse's mane, 
 said, loud enough for the guide to hear him, 
 "General D., I have the honor to wish you a 
 very good morning." If there had been any mis- 
 givings in the mind of the guide, this could not 
 fail to remove them. Immediately after he rode 
 up to me, and said that if I had no objections he 
 would ride forward, and make such arrangements 
 that there should be no delay in mounting me at 
 the next stage. To this I acceded with the most 
 gracious affability, so he rode on accordingly. 
 His zeal for the service might account for his 
 eagerness, yet I hope I will not be accounted un- 
 charitable when I suspected that the importance, 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 47 
 
 which attaches to the person who is first to com- 
 municate an extraordinary piece of news, may 
 have had something to do with all this alacrity. 
 However this may be, it served my purpose, for 
 at every stage not a moment was lost, the news 
 flying like wild fire. I found horses ready at 
 every house, and never was for one moment de- 
 layed. 
 
 With my friend Beau B. the result was some- 
 what different, for on arriving at the stage there 
 was nothing for him but our exhausted dog-tired 
 horses to mount, which in the state of the roads 
 would have been utter madness ; so he had to 
 wait in a roadside inn, consoling himself with 
 what philosophy he could muster till they were 
 sufficiently recruited with food and rest to con- 
 tinue their journey. 
 
 On this journey there occurred a circumstance 
 which, as it is intimately connected with the 
 secret historv of the Province, deserves to be re- 
 lated. It will be news to most of my neighbors 
 that the Province of Canada has a secret history 
 of its own, or they may suppose that it may con- 
 tain some such tit-bits as the secret history of 
 the Court of St. Petersburg in the days of Cath- 
 arine ; but I am sorry to say that our secret his- 
 tory affords nothing so piquante ; it only relates 
 to the diplomacy of the Court of St. James, 
 with its effects on the Court of the Chateau St. 
 Ivouis. 
 
 In those days Sir George Prevost filled the 
 vice-regal chair of Her Majesty's dominions in 
 British North America, and a more incompetent 
 
48 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Viceroy could hardly have been selected for such 
 trying times. Timid at all times, despairing of 
 his resources, he was afraid to venture anything; 
 and when he did venture, like an unskilful hunter, 
 he spurred his horse spiritedly at the fence, and 
 while the animal rose he suddenly checked him — 
 baulked him in the leap he could have easily 
 cleared, and landed himself in the ditch. Thus he 
 acted at Sackett's Harbour and thus at Platts- 
 burg, where he was in possession of the forts 
 when he ordered the retreat to be sounded, and 
 ran away out of one side of the town while the 
 enemy were equally busy in evacuating it at the 
 other. But to my story. Late on the evening of 
 our first day's journey, and therefore somewhere 
 midway between Kingston and Toronto, we over- 
 took an officer of Sir George Prevost's Staff. He 
 asked us why we were riding so fast ? We told 
 him, to be present at the coming battle. He told 
 us we might save ourselves the trouble, as there 
 would be no battle till he was there, and hinted 
 perhaps not then ; and strongly recommended 
 that, instead of pushing on through such roads 
 during the night, we should stop at a house he 
 pointed out to us, and where he was going. 
 Thinking, however, that a battle was not always 
 at the option of one party, we determined to push 
 on, while he turned up to a good looking two 
 story white framed house on the lake side of the 
 road. Many years after, the late Mr. Gait was 
 employed to advocate the War Losses in Canada 
 with His Majesty's Government. In one of his 
 conferences with the Colonial Secretary, the lat- 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 49 
 
 ter stated that everything that could be done had 
 been done for the defence of the Province, and 
 that it never had been the intention either of the 
 Imperial or Colonial Government to abandon it. 
 Mr. Gait then placed in his hands a paper, pur- 
 porting to be a copy of a despatch from Sir 
 George Prevost to Sir Gordon Drummond, order- 
 ing him to withdraw his forces from the upper 
 part of the Province, and to concentrate them to 
 cover Kingston. The Secretary then, turning to 
 Gait, said rather sternly : 
 
 "Sir, you could not have come fairly by this 
 copy of a private despatch ?" 
 
 Gait calmly replied, "My Lord, however this 
 paper was come by at first, I came honestly 
 enough by it, for it was sent to me with other 
 papers to assist me in advocating the claims of 
 those who have suffered in the war ; but I thank 
 your Iyordship for admitting that it is a copy of 
 a despatch whether private or public." 
 
 His Ivordship felt that, in his haste to crimin- 
 ate, he had allowed his diplomacy to be taken by 
 surprise. 
 
 Gait told me this story, and I then told him 
 my meeting the officer, who undoubtedly was the 
 bearer of the despatch ; he confessed to me that 
 it was at that house and on that night that the 
 despatches were abstracted from that Staff Offi- 
 cer's sabre-tasche, copied, resealed and returned. 
 Of course he never would tell me who were the 
 perpetrators ; but if a certain Colonel of Militia 
 (who was not then present, but attending his 
 duty on the frontier) were now alive,— poor fel- 
 
50 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 low ! he came by an untimely end — I have no 
 doubt but he could throw some light on the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 We continued to be furnished with good horses 
 till we arrived at Toronto, (then York,) for 
 there being then moonlight we rode twenty 
 hours out of the twenty-four, and it appeared 
 that we had advanced for the two last days (for 
 the first day we only made one stage) at the rate 
 of seventy-five miles per day, which, considering 
 the state of the roads, was far from being amiss. 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 
 
 51 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ah, me ! what perils do environ 
 
 The man that meddles with cold iron ! 
 
 Luckily the moment we arrived at Toronto, we 
 were informed that a gun-brig was about to sail 
 for Niagara, on board which we were shipped. 
 About sun-set we sailed, and the wind being fair, 
 we arrived in the mouth of the Niagara river at 
 daylight, and lost no time in ordering horses ; 
 and while they were getting ready, we were anx- 
 iously employed in examining and cross-examin- 
 ing witnesses as to the contradictory reports 
 that were in circulation as to a battle. All we 
 could elicit was, that there had been some fight- 
 ing, for many had heard from Queenston Heights 
 the noise both of artillery and musketry. Some 
 said we had been defeated, and were in full re- 
 treat on Niagara ; others that we had cut the 
 enemy to pieces, and that the few that were left 
 were busy crossing to their own side. Of course, 
 as in most matters of rumor, both reports were 
 partly true and partly false. We had obtained a 
 victory, but lost severely in so doing ; and the 
 enemy, in consequence of the masterly arrange- 
 ments of Major General Scott, one of the best 
 soldiers in the American Army, (and one of the 
 most gentlemanly men I ever met with,) had re- 
 
52 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 tired on Fort Brie ; and a body of our troops, 
 under Major General Convan of the Royals, had 
 pressed hard upon them, and had he not been 
 disabled by a wound, it is the general opinion, 
 would have followed them into the Fort. The 
 first of the particulars we were told by an officer 
 who had come from the field on the spur, with 
 the despatches, and he advised me as a friend 
 (for we were old acquaintances) to stay where I 
 was, and get my hospital in readiness, for, he as- 
 sured me, that from the manner our Regiment 
 had been handled, I would have quite enough to 
 do at home without going abroad to look for ad- 
 ventures. Accordingly, upon inquiring where my 
 wounded were to be put, I was shown a ruinous 
 fabric, built of logs, called Butler's Barracks, from 
 having been built during the revolutionary war 
 by Butler's Rangers for their temporary accom- 
 modation. Nothing could be worse constructed 
 for an hospital for wounded men — not that it was 
 open to every wind that blew, for at midsummer 
 in Canada that is rather an advantage ; but 
 there was a great want of room, so that many 
 had to be laid on straw on the floor, and these 
 had the best of it, for their comrades were put 
 into berths one above another as in a transport 
 or packet, where it was impossible to get round 
 them to dress their wounds, and their removal 
 gave them excrutiating pain. 
 
 In the course of the morning I had my hands 
 full enough. Our Surgeon had gone to Scotland 
 in a state of health which rendered recovery hope- 
 less, and our senior assistant, naturally of a deli- 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 53 
 
 cate constitution, and suffering under disease at 
 the time of the action, had the last of his strength 
 exhausted in bringing his wounded down. Wag- 
 gon after waggon arrived, and before mid-day I 
 found myself in charge of two hundred and twen- 
 ty wounded, including my own Regiment, prison- 
 ers and militia, with no one to assist me but my 
 hospital Serjeant, who, luckily for me, was a man 
 of sound sense and great experience, who made a 
 most able second ; but with all this the charge 
 was too much for us, and many a poor fellow 
 had to submit to amputation whose limb might 
 have been preserved had there been only time to 
 take reasonable care of it. But under the circum- 
 stances of the case it was necessary to convert a 
 troublesome wound into a simple one, or to lose 
 the patient's life from want of time to pay him 
 proper attention. 
 
 One of the many blunders of this blundering 
 war, was that the Staff of the Army was never 
 where it was wanted. The Medical and Commis- 
 sariat Staffs, for instance, were congregated at 
 the headquarters at Quebec, where they were in 
 redundancy, with nothing for them to do, while a 
 Staff Surgeon and an Hospital Mate were all 
 that was allowed for the Army of the Right, — 
 men who must have been active beyond all pre- 
 cedent if they could keep the office business, the 
 accounts and returns square, without even at- 
 tempting to interfere with the practice ; and all 
 this at a time too, when there was hardly a regi- 
 ment in the field that had its full complement of 
 medical officers. 
 
54 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 There is hardly on the face of the earth a less 
 enviable situation than that of an Army Surgeon 
 after a battle — worn out and fatigued in body and 
 mind, surrounded by suffering, pain and 
 misery, much of which he knows it is not in his 
 power to heal or even to assuage. While the bat- 
 tle lasts these all pass unnoticed, but they com© 
 before the medical man afterwards in all their 
 sorrow and horror, stripped of all the excitement 
 of the "heady fight." 
 
 It would be a useful lesson to cold-blooded poli- 
 ticians, who calculate on a war costing so many 
 lives and so many limbs as they would calculate 
 on a horse costing so many pounds — or to the 
 thoughtless at home, whom the excitement of a 
 gazette, or the glare of an illumination, more 
 than reconciles to the expense of a war — to wit- 
 ness such a scene, if only for one hour. This sim- 
 ple and obvious truth was suggested to my mind 
 by the exclamation of a poor woman. I had 
 two hundred and twenty wounded turned in upon 
 me that morning, and among others an American 
 farmer, who had been on the field either as a mil- 
 itia man or a camp follower. He was nearly six- 
 ty years of age, but of a most Herculean frame. 
 One ball had shattered his thigh bone, and an- 
 other lodged in his body, the last obviously mor- 
 tal. His wife, a respectable elderly looking wom- 
 an, came over under a flag of truce, and immed- 
 iately repaired to the hospital, where she found 
 her husband lying on a truss of straw, writhing 
 in agony, for his sufferings were dreadful. Such 
 an accumulation of misery seemed to have stun- 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 55 
 
 ned her, for she ceased wailing, sat down on the 
 ground, and taking her husband's head on her 
 lap, continued long, moaning and sobbing, while 
 the tears flowed fast down her face ; she seemed 
 for a considerable time in a state of stupor, till 
 awakened by a groan from her unfortunate hus- 
 band, she clasped her hands, and looking wildly 
 around, exclaimed, u O that the King and the 
 President were both here this moment to see the 
 misery their quarrels lead to — they surely would 
 never go to war again without a cause that they 
 could give as a reason to God at the last day, 
 for thus destroying the creatures that He hath 
 made in his own image." In half an hour the 
 poor fellow ceased to suffer. 
 
 I never underwent such fatigue as I did for the 
 first week at Butler's Barracks. The weather 
 was intensely hot, the flies were in myriads, and 
 lighting on the wounds, deposited their eggs, so 
 that maggots were bred in a few hours, produc- 
 ing dreadful irritation, so that long before I could 
 go round dressing the patients, it was necessary 
 to begin again ; and as I had no assistant but 
 my serjeant, our toil was incessant. For two 
 days and two nights, I never sat down ; when 
 fatigued 1 sent my servant down to the river for a 
 change of linen, and having dined and dressed, 
 went back to my work quite refreshed. On the 
 morning of the third day, however, I fell asleep 
 on my feet, with my arm embracing the post of 
 one of the berths. It was found impossible to 
 awaken me, so a truss of clean straw was laid 
 on the floor, on which I was deposited, and an 
 
56 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 hospital rug thrown over me ; and there I slept 
 soundly for five hours without ever turning. 
 
 My instructions were, as soon as a man could 
 be safely removed, to ship him for York, and 
 as the whole distance was by water conveyance, 
 and there were ships of war always in readiness, 
 and as my men were eminently uncomfortable 
 where they were, I very soon thinned my hospi- 
 tal, and the few that remained over were sent to 
 a temporary general hospital, and I was de- 
 spatched to Chippawa in the neighborhood of the 
 Falls of Niagara. 
 
 My duty here was to keep a kind of a medical 
 boarding house. The sick and wounded from the 
 Army were forwarded to me in spring waggons, 
 and I took care of them during the night, and in 
 the morning I forwarded them on to Niagara by 
 the same conveyance, so that my duty commenc- 
 ed about sun-set, and terminated at sun-rise. By 
 this arrangement I had the whole of the day to 
 myself, and in the vicinity of the Falls there was 
 no difficulty in employing it agreeably. My first 
 business on my arrival, on a beautiful summer 
 afternoon, was to visit the Table Rock. My first 
 sight of the Falls most woefully disappointed me, 
 — it was certainly grander than any fall I had 
 ever seen, those of the Clyde included ; but it was 
 not on that scale of magnificence I had been led 
 to expect, the opposite shore seemed within a 
 stone's throw, and the height of the Fall not very 
 great. I walked to the edge of the rock, and 
 seated myself with my legs dangling over, and 
 blessed my stars that I was not a man to be 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 57 
 
 thrown into ecstacies and raptures merely be- 
 cause other people had been so. After about a 
 quarter of an hour's contemplation I resolved to 
 return to my quarters, and previous to rising, I 
 bent forward and looked straight down. Below 
 me were two men fishing, diminished by the dis- 
 tance — 
 
 "The fishermen that walked upon the beach 
 Appeared like mice." 
 
 This immediately gave me a notion of the height 
 I was perched upon ; a sense of sickness and gid- 
 diness came over me, and, like Edgar, I prudent- 
 ly resolved — 
 
 "I'll look no more, 
 
 Lest the brain turn, and the deficient sight 
 
 Topple down headlong." 
 
 But I did not make my retreat in a manner quite 
 so dignified as could have been wished, for in 
 coming down the bank I had unslung my sword, 
 and was carrying it in my hand ; it I pitched 
 backwards over my head, and throwing myself 
 first on the broad of my back, I rolled over half 
 a dozen times, till I thought myself a sufficient 
 distance from the verge of the precipice to get 
 upon my legs, and it will easily be believed I was 
 in no hurry to return to my former position. 
 
 I then set on foot a series of experiments to 
 ascertain the width of the Falls, by throwing 
 stones across, but by some extraordinary fatali-> 
 ty they seemed to drop from my hand into the 
 enormous cauldron that boiled and smoked be- 
 low. Next day I came armed with an Indian 
 
58 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 bow, but the arrows met with no greater suc- 
 cess than the stones — they,, too, dropt as if im- 
 pelled by a child's force ; and it was not til 1 ! after 
 I looked at the Falls in every aspect that I con- 
 vinced myself that they were such a stupendous 
 work of nature as they really are. The fact is, 
 there is nothing at hand to compare them with, 
 and a man must see them often, and from every 
 different point of view, to have any proper con- 
 ception of the nature of them. I never heard of 
 any one except Mrs. Boyle Corbett who was sat- 
 isfied with seeing the Falls from her bed-room 
 window while dressing for dinner ; but I have 
 often been amused, while staying at the hotel 
 there, to see a succession of respectable people 
 come from Buffalo to Chippawa by steam, take 
 the stage that stops an hour at the Falls, dine, 
 and see them, and start for Queenston, quite con- 
 vinced that they had seen everything worth see- 
 ing in the neighborhood. Getting tired of the in- 
 active life I was leading, I applied to get into the 
 field, and it luckily so happened that another 
 medical man had as great a desire to quit it as I 
 to get into it ; accordingly, an exchange was soon 
 agreed upon — he being duly installed in the Chip- 
 pawa hospital, and I receiving the route to join 
 the Army before Fort Erie. 
 
 The leaguer before Fort Erie had been always 
 called the "Camp," and I certainly expected that, 
 like other camps, it would have been provided 
 with tents ; but in this I was mistaken. It was 
 rather a bivouac than a camp, the troops shelter- 
 ing themselves under some branches of trees that 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 59 
 
 only collected the scattered drops of rain, and 
 sent them down in a stream on the heads of the 
 inhabitants, and as it rained incessantly for two 
 months, neither clothes nor bedding could be kept 
 dry. I, though a young soldier, showed myself 
 an old one, for my friend Tom F having rath- 
 er a better hut than his neighbors, I took up my 
 quarters there, and his bed being raised on fork- 
 ed sticks, I placed my own under it, so that the 
 rain had to penetrate through his bed clothes 
 and mattress before it could reach me. 
 
 This arrangement did admirably for some 
 time, till one night we were visited by the most 
 tremendous thunder storm I ever witnessed in 
 this or any other country, and accompanied with 
 a deluge of rain, that might have done credit to 
 Noah's flood. The hut was very soon swimming, 
 and I was awoke by my bed being overflowed, 
 and started up to get out, but the water that 
 flooded the floor softened the earth in which the 
 forked sticks that supported Tom's bed were 
 driven, and it falling forward jammed me in 
 among the wet bed clothes, where I was nearly 
 drowned, till Tom starting to his feet allowed me 
 to raise the wreck and crawl on all-fours from 
 under it. 
 
 I may here remark what has always struck me 
 as a great deficiency in the military education of 
 the British Army— they are too much taken care 
 of by their officers, and never taught to take 
 care of themselves. In quarters their every mo- 
 tion is under the surveillance of their officers— 
 the Captain and Subaltern of the day visit them 
 
60 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 each twice a day, and the Commanding Officer 
 and one or other of the Majors frequently, to 
 say nothing of the Surgeon and the Captain of 
 their Company, who, if he (as sometimes hap- 
 pens) is a man possessed of a spirit of fidgetty 
 zeal for the service, actually harasses them to 
 death by his kind attention to their wants. 
 
 It must be certified that their room is duly 
 swept and cleaned, their bedding regularly mad«» 
 up and folded, their meals properly dressed, and 
 it is not even left to their own discretion to eat 
 them when dressed, but an officer must see and 
 certify that fact. 
 
 Their shaving, their ablutions, their cleaning 
 their shoes and clothes, all come under the same 
 strict supervision, so that at last they get into 
 the notion that their comfort, cleanliness, feeding 
 and clothing, all are the duty and business of 
 their officers, they having no interest in the mat- 
 ter, and that what they are not ordered to do 
 for their own relief they may leave undone In 
 the sister service this is not so. A sailor will 
 mend his clothes, will leave his hammock proper- 
 ly fitted, his bedding properly made, and his 
 comforts so far as depends upon himself, proper- 
 ly cared for, whether his officers order it or not. 
 The result of all this excessive care and attention 
 is that you make men mere children. When the 
 soldier leaves his clean comfortable barracks in 
 England and is put into the field, where he has 
 few or none of the accommodations he had at 
 home, he is utterly helpless, and his officer on 
 whom he leant, is just as helpless when a new 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 6l 
 
 state of things arises, as he can possibly be. All 
 this was most fully illustrated before Fort Erie. 
 The line might nearly as well have slept in the 
 open air. The incorporated Militia, on the con- 
 trary, erected shanties, far superior, in warmth, 
 tightness and comfort, to any canvas tent. De 
 Watteville's regiment, which was recruited, chief- 
 ly from the prison hulks, consisted of all the na- 
 tions of Europe, but all of them had served in 
 the armies of Napoleon, and all of them had 
 there learned how to make the best of a bad bar- 
 gain. These, though they had not the skill in the 
 axe inherent in their brethren of the Militia, took 
 down hemlock boughs (a species of the pine, 
 "pinus canadensis,") and cutting off the tails of 
 them, made thatched wigwams, perfectly weath- 
 erproof ; and though they could not equal the 
 Canadian Militia in woodcraft, they greatly ex- 
 celled them in gastronomic lore ; and thus, while 
 our fellows had no better shift than to frizzle 
 their rations of salt provisions on the ends of 
 their ramrods, these being practical botanists, 
 sent out one soldier from each mess, who gather- 
 ed a haversack full of wild pot herbs, with which 
 and a little flour their ration was converted into 
 a capital kettle of soup. 
 
 I shall have occasion to show hereafter how 
 easily those camp habits may be acquired; mean- 
 time I have only to remark that, were they gen- 
 erally understood, an army might often be kept 
 in the field in an infinitely more serviceable con- 
 dition than it now is, and the prevalence of ague 
 and dysentery in a body of men exposed to hard- 
 
62 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 ship and privation, if not totally arrested, might 
 at least be very much diminished. I lately saw 
 a very clever article on this subject by Sir J. K. 
 Alexander of the 32d Regt., now quartered at 
 London, U.C., and I wrote him a very long and 
 a very prosy letter thereanent. My positions, if 
 I remember aright, were, first — That every Regi- 
 ment in Canada should be made a Light Infantry 
 Regiment, insomuch as they ought to be taught 
 to understand and obey the bugle ; secondly, that 
 they should be taught the use of the axe, without 
 which a Regiment is absolutely helpless in the 
 woods, and this might be done by making them 
 chop their own firewood, and giving them the 
 money that is otherwise given to the contractor : 
 and thirdly, that they should be taken into the 
 woods for a month every summer, with a party of 
 woodsmen to teach them how to erect shanties, 
 cut fire-wood and provide for themselves in such 
 a situation. Even the Commissariat Department 
 (the most important in modern warfare) may be 
 dispensed with by able woods-men. Sir William 
 Johnson marched his Regiment, who were all 
 woods-men, from the Mohawk River to Fort Nia- 
 gara, through the woods, requiring no other sup- 
 port, on that long line of march, than their rifles 
 were amply sufficient to supply them with. 
 
 When I arrived at Fort Brie, I found myself ap- 
 pointed to the very service I would have chosen 
 had I had the right of choosing. A corps of six 
 flank companies was organized under the com- 
 mand of Lieutenant Colonel Drummond, of Kel- 
 tie, then commandant of the 104th Regiment. 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 63 
 
 Colonel Drummond was everything that could 
 be required in a soldier ; brave, generous, open- 
 hearted and good natured, he added to all these 
 the talent of a first-rate tactitian; and if at times 
 eccentricities broke out through all these, any one 
 who knew him must have agreed with his clans- 
 man, and I believe kinsman, Sir Gordon Drum- 
 mond, that "all these eccentricities would one 
 day mellow down into sound common sense, and 
 that Keltie would be an honor to the service." 
 Alas ! his prophecy was destined never to be ful- 
 filled — that was his last campaign, and he fell in 
 it as a brave man and a soldier would wish to 
 fall, a death far less to be pitied than envied. But 
 I am anticipating. We were divided into three 
 brigades — let not the old soldier suppose that 
 these were such brigades as are generally in the 
 army. Our force never amounted to 9,000 men, 
 including artillery, cavalry and militia, and these 
 took their tour of piquet duty in rotation, so 
 that we had one day of duty, were relieved the 
 next, and on the fourth again took our turn. 
 This, all things considered, especially alarms and 
 skirmishes^ when we all turned out, was pretty 
 hard work, but we were in high spirits, and it 
 never affected us. One of the great drawbacks 
 of the service in Canada was that we got the 
 rubbish of every department in the army. Any 
 man whom The Duke deemed unfit for the Penin- 
 sula was considered as quite good enough for the 
 Canadian market, and in nothing was this more 
 conspicuous than in our Engineer Department. 
 Without the semblance of a battering train, it 
 
64 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 was deemed expedient to besiege Fort Krie, and 
 the ground was occupied, parties sent in advance, 
 and batteries ordered to be constructed. Our 
 first essay in this line was a battery on the main 
 road leading to the Fort, which was to breach 
 the strong stone building in the centre of it, on 
 which were mounted, if I recollect rightly, one 
 iron 24-pounder, one 18-pounder and two brass 
 field 24-pounders. I have never seen before or 
 since, any like them, but they were of the time 
 of George II., and were admirable guns in the 
 field, though not quite the best that could be used 
 for breaching the wall of a fort. A brass and an 
 iron mortar were afterwards added to this most 
 efficient battering train ; the latter, however, 
 having no bed, was placed in one of oak, which 
 it split almost as often as it was fired. After 
 much skirmishing with the enemy and the cover- 
 ing parties, the battery was at last opened, and 
 gentle reader ! if ever you saw what is termed 
 hopping bowling at cricket you may have some 
 idea how our fire operated. I very much doubt 
 if one shot in ten reached the rampart at all, and 
 the fortunate exceptions that struck the stone 
 building at which they were aimed, rebounded 
 from its sides as innocuous as tennis balls. 
 
 The fact is the distance had been miscalculat- 
 ed, and we were attempting to breach a wall at 
 a distance that it was scarcely possible to hit it. 
 The enemy knew their distance better, and man- 
 aged to pitch shot and shell among us in a wav 
 that was anything but pleasant. 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 65 
 
 I remember one day while I was in the battery, 
 admiring our abortive attempts to do any mis- 
 chief, while a gun of the enemy was practising 
 with the most admirable precision on us, Mr. K., 
 of the Glengarries, lounged into the battery, and 
 casually asked the Commanding Engineer how 
 far we were from the Fort. He replied about 
 seven hundred yards. Mr. K. said he thought 
 double the distance would be nearer the mark ;— 
 this brought on a dispute, which Mr. K. offered 
 to settle by either cutting a fuse or laying a gun 
 for the supposed distance. To this it was replied 
 that both the powder and the fuses were bad, 
 and no faith could be had in them. Mr. K. then 
 asked leave to lay the 24-pounder, and the Engi- 
 neer, with a sneer, looking at his green jacket, 
 observed, that there was some difference between 
 a rifle and a 24-pounder ; however, Mr. K. then 
 himself on the trail of the gun, brought out the 
 coign further than it had been before, and from 
 the orders he gave to the artillery even, showed, 
 at least, that he knew the words of command in 
 working a gun. The presiding Engineer, seeing 
 the elevation he was taking, asked him if he was 
 aiming at the truck of the flagstaff of the Fort. 
 He replied, no— the site of the embrazure would 
 be high enough for him. The gun was fired, and 
 the ball entered the sand bags about a foot be- 
 low the mark. He then asked leave to try a sec- 
 ond shot. He laid the gun with great care, and 
 took a long while to do it,— at last he gave the 
 word "fire," away went the ball, and driving the 
 sand up from the site of the embrazure, took the 
 
66 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 enemy's gun on the transom, and capsized it. 
 "Pray, sir," said the Engineer, "where might 
 you have learned to lay guns?" "At Woolwich," 
 was the reply, "where I was three years Serjeant 
 Major of Artillery." 
 
 It was then resolved that another battery 
 should be erected some hundreds of yards in ad- 
 vance, and to the right of the first. Accordingly, 
 our brigade was sent out to drive the enemy's 
 piquets out of the wood in our front, and estab- 
 lish parties to cover the workmen. 
 
 This duty was performed in good style, but 
 with considerable loss on our part, for in a wood 
 the advancing party always acts to disadvan- 
 tage, as the retreating can fire from under cover, 
 and retreat in the smoke ; whereas the advancing 
 party must necessarily expose himself somewhat, 
 the quantum of exposure depending much on his 
 knowledge of his business in advancing in such a 
 way as will give his antagonists as little chance 
 as may be of taking a steady aim at him. 
 
 The ground was accordingly chosen, and the 
 third effort commenced. The enemy were aware 
 of what we were about, so they kept up a con- 
 stant fire of round shot and shells upon the work- 
 ing parties. The direction of their practice was 
 admirable, but they seemed to have altogether 
 lost their knowledge of elevation, for their shot 
 was uniformly over our heads. At last the bat- 
 tery was declared ready to open, but, as it was 
 masked by a considerable belt of trees, these had, 
 of course, to be felled, and that required a strong 
 covering, and an equally strong working party. 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 67 
 
 If the enemy had failed with their round shot 
 against the men in the trenches, they were infi- 
 nitely more fortunate with their grape against 
 the covering and working party. This was by far 
 the bloodiest bush skirmish we had. The party 
 with which I was, though not 120 strong, had six 
 killed and about thirty wounded ; however, we 
 stuck obstinately to it, and at last our object 
 was achieved. The battery was unmasked, and 
 the Lord have mercy on the defenders of the 
 Fort, for we would have none! "Mistakes will 
 creep into the best regulated families." When all 
 this profuse waste of life, time and labor had 
 been gone into, it was discovered that the bat- 
 tery had been erected without taking the levels, 
 and that a rise of ground in front of it prevented 
 us even from seeing the Fort. This at once de- 
 monstrated that the battery was useless, and ex- 
 plained the reason why the American shot had 
 been so innocuous. Di:ring the whole time we lay 
 before Fort Erie, bush-skirmishing was an every 
 day's occurrence, and though the numbers lost in 
 each of these affairs may seem but trifling, yet 
 the aggregate of men put hors de combat in a. 
 force so small as ours became very serious in the 
 long run. They generally commenced with some 
 accidental rencontre of videttes — their firing 
 brought out the piquet, then the brigade on duty, 
 and then, not unfrequently, the brigade next for 
 duty. I think, on a fair average of three months, 
 I enjoyed this amusement about three times a 
 week. 
 
68 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Excepting only a melee of cavalry, a bush skir- 
 mish is the only aspect in which modern warfare 
 appears in anything picturesque. Iyook at all 
 attempts at painting a modern battle, and unless 
 the painter takes such a distance as to render 
 everything indistinct, you have nothing but a 
 series of stiff, hard, regular, straight lines, that 
 might represent a mathematical diagram in uni- 
 form. Not so with light infantry in a wood. 
 There a man ceases to be merely a part of a ma- 
 chine, or a point in a long line. Both his person- 
 al safety and his efficiency depend on his own 
 knowledge and tact. To stand straight upright 
 and be shot at is no part of his duty ; his great 
 object is to annoy the enemy, and keep himself 
 safe ; and so far was this carried by the tacti- 
 cians of the Prussian school, that in a German 
 Contingent, which served on this continent dur- 
 ing the revolutionary war, a yager has been flog- 
 ged for getting himself wounded. 
 
 Perhaps there can be no military scene more 
 fit for the pencil than a body of light infantry 
 awaiting an attack. The variety of attitude ne- 
 cessary to obtain cover — the breathless silence — 
 the men attentive by eye and ear — every glance 
 (furtively lowered) directed to the point — some 
 kneeling, some lying down, and some standing 
 straight behind a tree— the officer with his silver 
 whistle in his hand, ready to give the signal to 
 commence firing, and the bugle boy looking earn- 
 estly in his officer's face waiting for the next 
 order. This is worth painting, which cannot, by 
 any one having a decent regard for truth, be said 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 69 
 
 of the base reliefs that we see on the tombs of 
 heroes, of a line of men marching in step, each 
 with his bayonet levelled at precisely the same 
 angle, in a manner that would draw forth the 
 enthusiastic approbation of the shade of Sir 
 David Dundas, but which no effort of the genius 
 of sculptor or painter could even render more 
 tolerable, than a well executed representation of 
 the same quantity of park pales. 
 
 This species of warfare necessarily draws forth 
 the individual talent of the soldier. I once saw 
 a soldier of the 32nd take two American sentries 
 prisoners, by placing his cap and great coat on a 
 bush, and while they were busy firing at his im- 
 age and superscription, he fetch'd a circuit, got 
 behind them, waited till both of their firelocks 
 were discharged, and then drove them before him 
 into the picquet guard. 
 
 The Glengarry Regiment being provincials, pos- 
 sessed many excellent shots. They were not 
 armed with the rifle, but with what I greatly pre- 
 fer to that arm, the double sighted light infan- 
 try musket. A rifle is by no means suited for a 
 day's fighting ; when it gets foul from repeated 
 firing it is difficult even to hammer the ball down, 
 and the same foulness which clogs the barrel 
 must injure the precision of the ball. The well 
 made smooth barrel on the contrary, is to a cer- 
 tain degree scoured by every discharge, and can 
 stand sixty rounds without the necessity of clean- 
 ing. Nor is it in the precision of its aim for any 
 useful purpose inferior to the rifle, that is to say 
 in the hands of a man who knows how to use it. 
 
70 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 I have seen a Sergeant of the Glengarries who 
 would allow you to pick out a musket from any 
 of the corps, and let him load it, when he would 
 knock the head off a pigeon on the top of the 
 highest tree in the forest. 
 
 In the British Army one would suppose that 
 the only use of a musket was understood to be 
 that it could carry a bayonet at the end of it. 
 The quantity of powder allowed to be expended 
 in teaching the men the use of their principal 
 weapon is fifteen rounds per annum. Now, sup- 
 pose such a limitation was placed on sportsmen, 
 is it possible to conceive that on the twelfth of 
 August, or the first of September, there could be 
 found one man who could bring down a grouse 
 or a partridge ? No ; the officers in command of 
 corps should have an unlimited power in the ex- 
 penditure of ammunition, and should only be 
 made answerable for their Regiment being effi- 
 cient in their practice when called into the field. 
 
 In this regiment there were a father and three 
 sons, American IT. E. Loyalists, all of them 
 crack shots. In a covering party one day the 
 father and one of the sons were sentries on the 
 same point. An American rifleman dropped a 
 man to his left, but in so doing exposed himself, 
 and almost as a matter of course, was instantly 
 dropped in his turn by the unerring aim of the 
 father. The enemy were at that moment being 
 driven in, so the old man of course( for it was a 
 ceremony seldom neglected,) went up to rifle his 
 -ictim. On examining his features he discovered 
 &at it was his own brother. Under any circum- 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 71 
 
 stances this would have horrified most men, but 
 a Yankee has much of the stoic in him, and is 
 seldom deprived of his equanimity. He took pos- 
 session of his valuables, consisting of an old sil- 
 ver watch and a clasp knife, his rifle and ap- 
 pointments, coolly remarking", that it "served 
 him right for fighting for the rebels, when all the 
 rest of his family fought for King George." It 
 appeared that during the revolutionary war his 
 father and all his sons had taken arms in the 
 King's cause, save this one, who had joined the 
 Americans. They had never met him from that 
 period till the present moment ; but such is the 
 virulence of political rancour, that it can over- 
 come all the ties of nature. 
 
 With all our hardships and privations there 
 was nowhere to be met with a merrier set of fel- 
 lows than in the camp before Fort Erie. One of 
 the chief promoters of this was worthy Billy R. 
 of the King's, who, to all the qualifications of a 
 most accomplished soldier, added all the light- 
 headedness and wit of an Irishman. 
 
 There was in the camp an old thorn, up which 
 a wild vine had climbed, and then descended in 
 long branches to the ground, forming a natural 
 bower impervious to the rays of the sun. The 
 root of this tree was Billy's favourite seat (for he 
 was too much of the Falstafi build to be more 
 peripatetic than was absolutely necessary) and 
 no sooner was he seated than a group of officers 
 was established around him, and to these he 
 would tell funny stories and crack jokes by the 
 hour together. He was appointed to the com- 
 
72 RECOLLECTIONS OP 
 
 mand of the Incorporated Militia, and a more ju- 
 dicious selection could not have been made, not 
 only on account of his military talents, but his 
 invincible good temper and good humour, which 
 endeared him to the men, and made them take 
 a pleasure and a pride in obeying his orders and 
 attending to his instructions. Some idea may be 
 formed of his talents in this way, when I state 
 that in the course of a very few months, he ren- 
 dered a body of raw lads from the plough-tail as 
 efficient a corps as any in the field. 
 
 Towards the end of the business, when his men 
 were acting as light infantry, he was knocked off 
 his horse by a ball, which struck him in the fore- 
 head and came out over the ear. This would 
 have knocked the life out of most men, but it did 
 knock the wit out of Billy. He was raised and 
 placed in a blanket, his eyes still fixed on his 
 men, who he saw were pushing on in a way to 
 expose themselves. "Stop till I spake to the 
 boys," said he to the men, who were carrying 
 him off the field ; "Boys!" shouted he, "I have 
 only one remark to make, and that is, that a 
 stump or a log will stand a leaden bullet better 
 than the best of yees, and therefore give them 
 the honor to be your front rank men." Poor 
 Billy survived this severe wound many years, but 
 at last its effects began to tell. He became para- 
 lytic of the lower extremities, and had to be car- 
 ried from place to place ; but his wit and good 
 humor never forsook him. He died in the Isle of 
 Wight in 1827, on his way to Canada to draw his 
 land. 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 73 
 
 One day, when relieved from piquet, I announc- 
 ed to Col. P., who commanded our brigade, that 
 I had discovered a short way through the woods 
 to the camp, and accordingly I led the way, he 
 and Captain F., of the Glengarries, following. 
 By some fatality I mistook the path, and took a 
 wrong turn, so that instead of finding the camp 
 we came right on the top of an American piquet, 
 which opened fire upon us at about fifty yards 
 distance. Being use to this we were behind trees 
 in a moment, and the next were scampering in 
 different directions at greater or less angles from 
 the enemy. It may well be supposed I did not 
 wait on our brigadier, during the time we were 
 off duty, to receive thanks for my services as a 
 guide, nor when we did go on duty again was I 
 at all anxious to obtrude myself upon him ; in- 
 deed I kept as far from him as I could, but in 
 going his rounds at daylight he came up with me 
 seated by a piquet fire at. the extreme left of the 
 line. He saluted me most graciously, alluded to 
 our late exploit as a good joke, and asked me to 
 breakfast with him. "Ho, ho," thinks I, "he has 
 forgotten it all, and I'm forgiven— this is as it 
 should be." Lounging about after breakfast, and 
 talking over indifferent matters, a sputtering 
 fire began a little to our left, and the Colonel or- 
 dering a look out on the right, proceeded, fol- 
 lowed by me, to the scene of action. We soon 
 saw that this was the point of attack, so he sent 
 me to order up the reserve. This done I rejoined 
 him, and found him standing coolly giving his 
 orders in the middle of a whistling of bullets, far 
 
74 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 too thick to be pleasant. I stood by his side for 
 some minutes, thankful that none of these mis- 
 siles had a billet on us, when on a sudden I felt 
 a severe sharp pain from my brow to the back 
 of my head at the same moment the Colonel ex- 
 claimed : "By G — d ! you are shot through the 
 head." I sunk upon one knee, and taking off my 
 forage cap felt along, my head for blood, but none 
 was to be found. "It is only a graze," sai*d I. 
 "Colonel, is there any mark?" "Yes," said he, 
 "there is a red mark, but not from a ball, it 
 came from my switch. You gave me a d — 1 of a 
 fright the other day — now I have given you one, 
 so we are quits." 
 
 Weeks passed at this kind of warfare, that 
 served no purpose to the parties except to harass 
 one another, and mutually to thin our ranks. 
 The enemy determined on a grand attack, that, 
 but for an accident, would have finished the cam- 
 paign and our army together. They collected all 
 the force they could raise, giving the militia a 
 long exemption from playing at soldiers in their 
 own country for one day's active exertion in ours. 
 They at the same time marched a body of troops 
 down their own side of the river, to cross and 
 take us in rear. The time was altogether well 
 chosen. The principal part of the brigade on 
 duty was De Watteville's regiment, who being 
 foreigners, and formerly soldiers of Napoleon, 
 could not have any very ardent desire for a vic- 
 tory on our side. The day was cloudy, with a 
 continued drizzling rain. In the forenoon the 
 troops from the fort were marched out in small 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 75 
 
 parties, and stationed in rear of the piquets, and 
 towards the afternoon all was in readiness. 
 
 A sudden and unexpected attack was made. 
 The out ports were forced — the battery on the 
 right stormed, and the guns disabled ; the second 
 battery was also stormed, and the wheels of one 
 gun cut to pieces, and those of a second injured, 
 when two companies of the 82d, under Captain 
 Pattison, rushed up to the assistance of the 
 piquet which was guarding it. They poured a 
 volley into the mass of the enemy, who were 
 huddled together into so small a space that they 
 could not return it. Pattison immediately sprung 
 forward, and called out to the American officer 
 in command to surrender, as resistance would 
 only cause loss of life and could do no good. He 
 did give an order to ground arms, and some of 
 his men were in the act of doing so, when an 
 American soldier raised his rifle and shot Patti- 
 son through the heart. In one moment a charge 
 was made by the 82nd into the battery, and 
 every soul in it put to the bayonet, amounting, 
 I think, to upwards of two hundred men. 
 
 By this time the alarm was given in the camp, 
 and the men, without waiting for orders, rushed 
 out— their officers, who were at dinner, followed 
 at speed. The action became general, and the 
 enemy, finding that their object in destroying the 
 batteries had failed, returned in some confusion. 
 It is said that in war any new weapon, or any 
 new manoeuvre, strikes the enemy with terror, 
 and here we had an instance of it. A body of 
 the 82nd were opposed to a party of riflemen in 
 
76 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 the wood. The Captain commanding, to the ut- 
 ter astonishment of all of us old bush-whackers, 
 gave orders to charge, and the order was exe- 
 cuted in a very spirited style. This we thought 
 was consigning our men to inevitable destruc- 
 tion ; but no such thing : the riflemen had no 
 more idea of a bayonet being pointed at them 
 than they had of being swallowed up by an 
 earthquake ; and when the smoke cleared away, 
 and they saw the 82nd within twenty yards of 
 them, moving on at the "pas de charge," it 
 shook their nerves, — they fired, to be sure, but 
 with little effect, and then ran — they were too 
 late, however. The flat-foots got within their 
 deadly range, that is, bayonet's length — they 
 skivered many of them, and others were shot at 
 two muskets' length, and driven out of the 
 woods to the esplanade of the Fort, where they 
 were treated with a parting volley ; and the guns 
 of the Fort immediately opening on us, we took 
 the hint, and withdrew under the cover of the 
 woods. 
 
 I, like the rest of the dining parties, was 
 alarmed by the firing, and ran to the trenches. 
 On my road I met with about twenty of the men 
 of my own Regiment, and took them with me, 
 being guided to where the fire was thickest by 
 the noise. I found myself along with my friend, 
 Mautass, a Soc Chief, and his Indians. I have 
 had an opportunity of seeing bush-fighting in the 
 Indian fashion. It seemed to me to be a point 
 with them at every discharge of their rifle to 
 shift their position, and whenever they knocked 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 77 
 
 a fellow over, their yelling was horrible. I was 
 close to Mautass himself, and whenever he per- 
 formed this feat, after giving the triumphal yell, 
 he jumped behind a tree, and seemed to be en- 
 gaged in prayer — perhaps to thank the great 
 Spirit for his success, or as likely to petition him 
 that he might knock over a few more. 
 
 When the enemy retired, the Indians who had 
 shown so much wariness in the fight, and had 
 talked to me of the folly of my young men ex- 
 posing themselves, suddenly seemed to lose all 
 their caution, and bounded forward with a hor- 
 rible yell, threw themselves on the retreating ene- 
 my with their tomahawks, and were soon out of 
 our sight ; but as we advanced, we saw they left 
 their trace behind them in sundry cleft skulls — 
 They also, when their opponents were from fif- 
 teen to twenty yards in advance of them, threw 
 their tomahawks with unerring aim and great 
 force, burying the head of the hatchet up to the 
 eye in the body of their opponents. 
 
 I afterwards requested the Chief to show me 
 how he threw the tomahawk. He accordingly 
 cut a small chip out of the bark of a tree, and 
 standing some fourteen yards off, and taking his 
 tomahawk with its pole to the front, he threw it, 
 and it was buried some inches into the oak, with 
 the handle upmost, it having turned round in its 
 flight. 
 
 This is analogous to the custom of the Portu- 
 guese, who, in throwing the knife, always project 
 it with the handle foremost, but it as uniformly 
 strikes with the point. 
 
78 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 These Socs or Sacs were the only genuine un- 
 adulterated Indians I ever saw. They were very 
 fine men, few of them under six feet high, and 
 their symmetry perfectly faultless. In action they 
 fought all but naked, which gymnastic undressing 
 gave you the means of seeing their forms to the 
 greatest advantage. 
 
 Their features, too, had not the rounded form 
 or stolid expression of many Indian tribes, par- 
 ticularly those towards the North. They had 
 European features, or, more properly, those of 
 the Asiatic. Their Chief had so strong a resem- 
 blance to George the Third that even the tribe 
 called the head on the half penny Mautass, and 
 he certainly might have passed for a bronze 
 statue of that worthy and estimable Monarch. 
 
 After the action was over, and it was drawing 
 towards dusk, I rapidly traversed the ground 
 with a strong party to look out for wounded, 
 and rinding only a few of the enemy, I ordered 
 them to be carried to the hospital, but I preced- 
 ed them to make preparations for their recep- 
 tion. When nearing the Camp, I found a party 
 of the band of our Regiment carrying in a blanket 
 an American officer mortally wounded, who was 
 greedily drinking water from one of the soldier's 
 canteens. I ordered them to lay him down, and 
 set myself to dress his wound. He calmly said, 
 "Doctor, it's all in vain — my wound is mortal, 
 and no human skill can help me — leave me here 
 with a canteen of water near me, and save your- 
 self — you are surrounded, and your only chance 
 of escape is to take to the woods in a northerly 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 70 
 
 direction, and then make your way east for 
 Queenston, — there is not a man of your army 
 who can escape by any other means — I am not at 
 liberty to tell you more." I, however, ordered 
 the men to carry him to a hut belonging to an 
 officer of my own Regiment, who undertook to 
 sit by him till my return. After he had been put 
 to bed I left him, and when I returned during 
 the night from my hospital, he was dead. He 
 proved to be Colonel Wood of the American En- 
 gineers — a man equally admired for his talents 
 and revered for his virtues. His calmness and 
 courage in the hour of death, with his benevo- 
 lence and kindness to myself and others, who 
 were doing any little they could to render his 
 last moments easy, convinced me that he deserv- 
 ed the high character which all his brother offi- 
 cers that I afterwards met with uniformly gave 
 him. 
 
 Next morning I discovered what the poor Col- 
 onel alluded to. The party sent down the right 
 bank of the Niagara to take us in rear, on ar- 
 riving at the place where it was determined they 
 should cross, saw a body of troops cooking their 
 dinners on the bank, and supposing their plan 
 was betrayed, desisted from the attempt. 
 
 The fact was, it was a party of men coming up 
 to join their Regiments in the field, who had 
 halted there by chance, and by this accident we 
 were saved, for had a small force landed they 
 must have taken our baggage, ammunition and 
 field guns (for the camp was deserted except by 
 the few guards that were mounted more for show 
 
80 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 than use), and had they attacked us in rear, 
 must have thrown us into inextricable confusion. 
 I could now see well enough why the enemy were 
 so easily driven in. Had the expected attack on 
 our rear taken place, there is no doubt they 
 would been out again in double their former 
 force ; but they had done all that there was any 
 necessity for them to do — they had brought us 
 into a general engagement, made us leave our 
 camp and park of artillery undefended, and had 
 their other column made the proposed attack in 
 rear, their loss, severe as it was under existing 
 circumstances, would have been of no account, 
 compared to the advantages that must have ac- 
 crued from it. 
 
 We continued this humbugging kind of warfare 
 for some time longer, when, finding there was no 
 chance of us breaching strong ramparts, or 
 knocking down stone towers with such artillery 
 as we had to apply, and under the direction of 
 such engineers as it pleased the Lord in His 
 wrath to bestow upon us, it was determined to 
 try the matter by a coup de main. Accordingly 
 about a week before the great attempt was to 
 be made, it was known in the camp, from the 
 General to the drum-boy, that it was in con- 
 templation. A worthy old officer of De Watte- 
 ville's used to salute his friends every morning 
 with — "Well, gentlemans! this would be one very 
 fine day for de grand object." As the intelligence 
 was so universal in our camp, it is not well sup- 
 posable that it should be unknown in that of the 
 enemy, and accordingly they had a full week to 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 8l 
 
 prepare for our attack. At last orders were giv- 
 en for the assault. It was to be made in two 
 divisions, one against the Fort, and another 
 against Snake hill, a fortified camp higher up the 
 lake. The troops at sun-set moved on, but before 
 we had started half an hour an express was sent 
 after us to recall us. Had the enemy had the 
 slightest doubt of the information their spies and 
 our deserters had given them as to our inten- 
 tions, this must have set it at rest. Some three 
 days after we had orders in form to make the 
 attack, and our brigade was to lead. Never were 
 men better pleased than ours were to hear this. 
 We were tired of the wet bivouac they called a 
 camp ; we were tired of our busy idleness! which, 
 though fatal to many of our comrades, had as 
 yet produced no military result ; and we knew 
 that whatever they might be at a distance, the 
 enemy had no chance with us at a hand-to-hand 
 fight, and therefore we hailed the prospect of an 
 assault as a relief from trouble — a glorious ter- 
 mination to a fatiguing and harassing campaign, 
 where, if we had got some credit by the Battle of 
 the Falls, accounts from that date to the pres- 
 ent had been pretty evenly balanced. 
 
 I have said that it was determined that our 
 brigade should lead, and never was honor more 
 highly appreciated. It struck us that the Gener- 
 al showed great discrimination and penetration 
 in selecting the very fittest men under his com- 
 mand for such a service, the more so that the 
 corps of flank companies to which I belonged, 
 was to lead immediately after the forlorn hope. 
 
82 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 We were the first for duty on that day, and the 
 relief brigade was summoned out at eleven and 
 marched to take up its position at twelve. We 
 breakfasted at eight ; Colonel Drummond was in 
 high spirits — it has sometimes struck me since 
 unnaturally high, — but that idea might have pro- 
 ceeded from the result. Be that as it may, cer- 
 tain it is that he had a presentiment that he 
 never would come out of that day's action, and 
 he made no secret of that feeling either from me 
 or several others of his friends. 
 
 We sat apparently by common consent long 
 after breakfast was over. Drummond told some 
 capital stories, which kept us in such a roar that 
 we seemed more like an after dinner than an 
 after breakfast party. At last the bugles sound- 
 ed the turn-out, and we rose to depart for our 
 stations ; Drummond called us back, and his face 
 assuming an unwonted solemnity, he said, "Now 
 boys! we never will all meet together here 
 again ; at least I will never again meet you. I 
 feel it and am certain of it ; let us all shake 
 hands, and then every man to his duty, and I 
 know you all too well to suppose for a moment 
 that any of you will flinch it." We shook hands 
 accordingly, all round, and with a feeling very 
 different from what we had experienced for the 
 last two hours, fell into our places. 
 
 On taking up our several stations on piquet, the 
 weather, which had been clear became suddenly 
 dark and cloudy, and a thick, drizzling rain be- 
 gan to fall, which, towards evening, increased to 
 a heavy shower. Colonel P., Colonel Drummond, 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 83 
 
 and some more of us, were congregated in a hut, 
 anything but rain-tight ; Colonel Drummond left 
 the hut, where we were smoking and talking, and 
 stowed himself away in a rocket case, where he 
 soon fell fast asleep. About midnight we were 
 summoned to fall in without noise, and a party 
 of sailors forming the forlorn hope, headed by a 
 midshipman taking the lead, our corps followed 
 close in their rear. When we were yet three hun- 
 dred yards from the fort their videttes fired on 
 us and immediately retired ; soon after the guns 
 of the Fort opened, but with little or no effect. 
 About 200 yards from the fort Drummond halt- 
 ed, and turning to me unbuckled his sword, which 
 he gave to me, telling me to keep it for his sake. 
 It was a regulation sword in a steel scabbard. 
 Thinking that he had no great faith in it, I of- 
 fered him mine, which was a Ferrara of admir- 
 able temper and edge ; but he said he had got a 
 boarding pike from the sailors whom he was go- 
 ing to join. He told me to stand where I was 
 and not expose myself ; and these were the last 
 words I ever heard him utter. 
 
 The sailors and our corps dashed on and made 
 good their lodgment in fine style, and after stand- 
 ing till the last of the attacking columns was 
 past, I began to feel my situation most particu- 
 larly unpleasant. A man must possess more 
 courage than I can pretend to, who can stand 
 perfectly cool, while, having nothing to do, he is 
 shot at like a target. Accordingly, I determined 
 to advance at all hazards, and at least have the 
 pleasure of seeing what was doing;, for my risk 
 
84 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 of being shot. I had not proceeded many yards 
 when I stumbled over a body, and on feeling, for 
 I could not see, I discovered he was wounded in 
 the arm and the blood flowing copiously. He 
 had fainted and fallen in attempting to get to 
 the rear. I fixed a field tourniquet on his arm, 
 and throwing him over my shoulder like a sack, 
 carried him to a ravine in rear, and delivered him 
 to the care of a Naval Surgeon I met with there. 
 He proved to be Major R. of the Royals, who, 
 but for my lucky stumble, would most probably 
 have given promotion to the senior Captain of 
 that distinguished Regiment. 
 
 When I came up to the fort I found no difficul- 
 ty in getting on the rampart, for our own men 
 were in full possession ; but just as I was scram- 
 bling over some dead bodies, an explosion took 
 place. At first I thought it was a shell had 
 burst close to me, for the noise was not greater 
 if so great, as that of a large shell ; but the tre- 
 mendous glare of light and falling of beams and 
 rubbish soon demonstrated that it was something 
 more serious. In a fact a magazine in a bastion 
 had exploded, and on the top of this bastion, 
 through some mistake of their orders, the 103rd 
 Regiment were either posted or scrambling up ; 
 all who were on the top were necessarily blown 
 up, and those not killed by the shock fell on the 
 fixed bayonets of their comrades in the ditch, 
 and thus, after we were in possession of the 
 place, in one instant the greater part of our force 
 was annihilated. 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 85 
 
 All was now confusion, and — d — 1 take the hind- 
 most ! How I got across the ditch, I cannot, 
 nor never could call to my memory ; but I found 
 myself scouring along the road at the top of my 
 speed, with a running accompaniment of grape, 
 cannister and musketry whistling about my ears, 
 and tearing the ground at my feet. 
 
 When about half way between the ditch and the 
 ravine, I heard a voice calling on me for help. 
 I found it was a wounded officer ; so, calling a 
 drum-boy of the Royals, who had a stretcher, we 
 laid him into it, and carried him after the man- 
 ner of a hand-barrow ; he entreated us to get 
 into the wood, as, on the road, we were likely to 
 be cut to pieces with the shot. Accordingly we 
 turned for that purpose ; but just as we were en- 
 tering, a round shot cut a large bough just above 
 our heads, and down it came on the top of the 
 three of us. I crawled backwards and the drum- 
 boy forwards ; and there we were staring at 
 each other ; however, there was no time to ex- 
 press our surprise. I ordered him in again, and 
 I crawled in at the other side ; and by our joint 
 exertions we got the poor fellow out of his un- 
 comfortable situation, and once in the wood we 
 were safe for the rest of our journey. I handed 
 him over to some medical men in the battery, 
 and went in search of my own men. 
 
 Day not being yet fairly broken, I did not 
 know whom I had been the means of saving, but 
 more than twelve months after I met in the 
 streets of Portsmouth with Captain C, of the 
 iQSrd, who, after shaking hands with me, thank- 
 
86 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 ed me for my kindness to him at Fort Erie, and 
 this was the first time that I ever knew the Regi- 
 ment to which my man belonged, for in the im- 
 perfect light I thought he had dark facings. On 
 my arrival in the battery there was a scene of 
 sad confusion. Sir Gordon Drummond was with 
 great coolness forming the men as they came in, 
 and I, with others, set to work to assist him. 
 Without regard to what corps they belonged, we 
 stuck them behind the breast-work, anticipating 
 an attack. Sir Gordon asked me what officers 
 were killed ; I told him all that I knew of, and 
 when I mentioned Colonel Drummond of Keltie, 
 and Colonel Scott, of Brotherton, (both like him- 
 self, Perthshire lairds, and neighbors of his,) he 
 seemed deeply affected. 
 
 I sent poor Drummond's sword, by his servant, 
 to his family, and reserved for a memorial, a 
 string of wampum beads which he had got from 
 the Indians, with whom he was an especial fa- 
 vourite. This I wore round my neck six years 
 afterwards in 1820, at the Cape of Good Hope, 
 when his brother, being Field Officer of the day, 
 riding past me observed it, and asked a gentle- 
 man who had come from India in the same ship 
 with me the cause of my wearing so extraordin- 
 ary an ornament. On being told, he waited on 
 me, and as I was the first person he had met 
 with who had been present when his brother fell, 
 he heard from me the circumstances I have here 
 related. 
 
 After this it was quite clear that we could get 
 no good by remaining, as we had failed in the 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 87 
 
 main object of the campaign. But remain 
 we did for some time, having an occasional 
 skirmish with the enemy, but nothing decisive. 
 At last it was determined that we should retire 
 behind the Chippawa ; this we accordingly did, 
 unfollowed by the enemy, who, when they saw us 
 fairly gone, took themselves across the river, 
 abandoning the fort they had defended so obsti- 
 nately for three months ; in fact it had served all 
 their purposes, which evidently were to keep us 
 busy as long as we could keep the field, prevent- 
 ing us doing mischief on their side by amusing us 
 on our own. 
 
 After the blow up, our little corps was broken 
 up, and the companies composing it joined their 
 respective battalions. My own regiment was 
 wretchedly reduced ; little more than three 
 months before it had gone into the Battle of the 
 Falls, five hundred strong, with a full comple- 
 ment of officers. Now we retired about sixty 
 rank and file, commanded by a Captain, two of 
 the senior Lieutenants carrying the colours, and 
 myself marching in rear— voild, His Majesty's 
 89th Regiment of Foot ! 
 
88 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 We took up our ground on the left bank of the 
 Chippawa, in the hope that we would be attack- 
 ed in that strong position ; but nothing was 
 further from the intention of the enemy than 
 such a flagrant absurdity. They, from time to 
 time, sent small parties to look at us; and there 
 was some very distant skirmishing, which prov- 
 ed very harmless amusement ; but they with- 
 drew at last, and we were ordered into winter 
 quarters. 
 
 Our regiment, with the iooth, took up their 
 quarters at Queenston, where we were soon 
 strengthened by the recovered wounded and sick 
 from the different hospitals. We were particu- 
 larly happy in a commanding officer. The then 
 young and handsome Marquis of Tweeddale, who 
 was Lieutenant Colonel of the iooth, commanded 
 our brigade : he had been educated in a good 
 school, under the "Great Duke;" and, like his 
 master, with an unceasing regard to the essen- 
 tials of the service, he had a most sovereign 
 contempt for those adventitious parts of it, which 
 weaker minds are apt to consider as of the high- 
 est importance. Should his lordship, in the pres- 
 ent high and responsible situation which he occu- 
 pies, have an opportunity of displaying his tal- 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 89 
 
 ents, I am much deceived if he will not add one 
 more to the numerous band of soldiers who have 
 raised their own and their country's name in the 
 fields of Hindostan ; therefore, God send him a 
 good war ! I have no great faith in him as a 
 politician : he is too honest a man ! 
 
 But whatever he may be, as a soldier or a 
 statesman, he was a wretched bad patient; for he 
 was wounded, in a way that I had every fear 
 would result in a permanent lameness ; and noth- 
 ing could save him but rest. I recommended 
 him, therefore, to spend most of his time on a 
 bed — for sofas were rather scarce in Oueenston at 
 that time ; — but he persisted in riding a pony, 
 with a crutch over his shoulder. Whether his mode 
 of management has induced lameness or not, I do 
 not know, for I have never seen him since ; but 
 if he is lame, it is no fault of mine. 
 
 Queenston, though in ruins, having, like all the 
 rest of the frontier, been wantonly destroyed by 
 the enemy, was then, as it is now, a very pret- 
 tily-situated village ; and the rest our men ob- 
 tained, after their severe fatigues, began to have 
 a most salutary effect upon them}, so, as my 
 senior colleague had recovered to such an ex- 
 tent as to attend to the diminished duties of the 
 regimental hospital there, I was despatched to 
 York — now Toronto — to take charge of about 
 thirty of my own men, who were in general hos- 
 pital in that garrison. 
 
 Toronto was then a dirty straggling village, 
 containing about sixty houses. The church — the 
 only one — was converted into a general hospital, 
 
90 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 and I formed my lodge in the wing of the Parlia- 
 ment buildings, which had escaped, when the 
 Americans had burnt the rest of that fabric. 
 
 Our accommodations were comfortable, by 
 comparison with what we had lately been obliged 
 to put up with. At all events, we had a tight 
 roof over our heads, a clean floor under our feet, 
 and the means of fire enough to keep us warm ; 
 and a soldier who is not content with this, on a 
 campaign, deserves to want. My own regiment 
 soon came down to form a part of the garrison 
 of Toronto ; and there I remained till the month 
 of December, 1814. 
 
 At this time, it was proposed to build a large 
 ship on Lake Huron — we having then so many on 
 Lake Erie— that would be able, from her size, 
 and the weight of her metal, to cope with the 
 small vessels that composed the American flotilla 
 on Lake Erie. As there is a channel through 
 Lake Saint Clair, and the Rivers Detroit and 
 Saint Clair, by which she could pass from the 
 one lake into the other, an inlet, called Penetan- 
 guishene, was selected as the proper site of a 
 new dock-yard, and a better sight could hardly 
 have been selected, in this, or any other, part of 
 the world. It was a narrow-mouthed, deep bay, 
 with plenty of water for any size of craft, and a 
 fine bold shore, easily defensible against any 
 ships that could approach ; but unluckily, at this 
 time, Penetanguishene was in the woods, thirty 
 miles from Lake Simcoe ; and before a ship of 
 the line could be built, a road must be cut, and 
 stones broke along it. 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 9 I 
 
 This, at mid-winter, in one of the northern- 
 most points of Canada, was no easy matter. But 
 when Government, in the time of war, determine 
 on a measure, the word impossible, as we used to 
 say in the army, is not to be found in Dundas— 
 and done it must be. 
 
 Accordingly, in the early part of December, I 
 volunteered my services, and, as nobody else 
 envied the job, they were accepted ; and a com- 
 pany of the Canadian Fencibles, with about the 
 same number of militia, under the direction of 
 Colonel Cockburn, of the Quarter Master Gener- 
 al's Department, was despatched up to the north, 
 with instructions to have the road cut at all haz- 
 ards. 
 
 When we arrived on the banks of Lake Simcoe, 
 we found it just in such a state that it could not 
 possibly be crossed ; for the ice was formed, so 
 that a boat could not get through it, but not 
 strong enough to bear a man's weight. But, as 
 there was a keen frost, we knew that this obsta- 
 cle would soon be overcome ; so we took up our 
 quarters in farm-houses along the margin of the 
 lake. 
 
 In two days it was considered practicable to 
 cross, and I volunteered to try it. 1 equipped 
 myself with a long pole, with a chisel at the end 
 of it, to try the ice with, and an axe slung across 
 my shoulder, and skated across, about twelve 
 miles. 
 
 The ice, though not very thick, was good, and 
 quite sufficient to bear men at extended order ; 
 so, on my return, I reported it practicable. Next 
 
92 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 morning the men were drawn out at the point 
 at which it was considered the most eligible for 
 getting on the ice ; but the moment we were 
 ready to start, a noise, like that of very loud 
 thunder, was heard, which ran round the lake, 
 and across it ; and, in an inconceivably short 
 time, the whole ice was broken into fragments, 
 some of some acres in extent, others of only a 
 few yards. What the cause of this phenomenon 
 could be, I never could form even a probable con- 
 jecture of, for there was no visible rise or fall of 
 the water ; but I was told, by the inhabitants of 
 the neighborhood, that they had more than once 
 seen the same thing before. 
 
 The question now arose what was to be done 
 next? The country people recommended that 
 we should wait till next day, when not only 
 would the broken ice be re-united, but the water 
 which had risen upon it would be frozen into one 
 solid mass, rendering the whole twice as strong 
 as on the day previous, when I had passed it. 
 
 All this was undeniable, but the season was so 
 far advanced, and heavy snow storms might be 
 expected, so that even one day was of conse- 
 quence. After due deliberation, it was resolved, 
 that having a coil of rope with us, it should be 
 stretched along, and each take hold of it, and 
 drag his hand sleigh, on which was his knapsack 
 and provisions, as well as divers tools, imple- 
 ments, and stores, requisite for the expedition. 
 In this guise we proceeded across the lake ; the 
 disasters were numerous but none of them seri- 
 ous. A fellow in stepping on a fracture of ice in 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 93 
 
 the shape of the letter V, would plump in and 
 then be dragged out again by his comrades, 
 amidst shouts of laughter. In this mode we pro- 
 gressed for upwards of six hours, until we reach- 
 ed the opposite side, where a huge pile of logs 
 was kindled ; a space swept clear of snow, and 
 we sat down to a late dinner. As the night ap- 
 peared clear, we scattered some hemlock boughs, 
 and raised a few of them to keep us from the 
 wind, but upon learning that the militia, who, 
 being from the neighborhood, had got over three 
 weeks before us, had left a regular shanty, with- 
 in a mile, we broke up our camp, and, deep as 
 the snow was, and late the hour, we proceeded 
 till we arrived at the spot, where trees were cut 
 down, a fire lighted, and we betook ourselves to 
 rest ; our previous fatigue securing us from any 
 apprehension of a sleepless night. 
 
 Next day we started along the road the militia 
 had cut, and in two hours came up with them. 
 As they were sufficiently numerous for one party, 
 it was resolved that we should get on some 
 miles in advance of them, and commence further 
 up the line. The snow was about three feet deep, 
 and made the marching, heavy-laden as we were, 
 toilsome ; but like Columbus' egg, everything is 
 comparatively easy when people know how to go 
 about it. One mode of proceeding was this: six 
 or seven men led on snow shoes in Indian file, 
 taking care to tread down the snow equally; 
 then followed the column, also in Indian file. 
 A.t about every thirty yards, the leader of the 
 column stepped aside, and letting the rest pass 
 
94 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 him, fell into the rear. By this means, after the 
 fatigue of first breaking the snow, he could 
 march on a beaten path, and thus, alternating 
 labor and rest, the thing was comparatively 
 easy. By sun-set we had made about five miles 
 beyond the militia camp, and it was counted, 
 considering the road, a very fair day's journey. 
 
 It would be tiresome to detail (even if at this 
 distance of time I was able to do so), the jour- 
 nal of a three months' residence in the woods, 
 one day being an exact counterpart of another. 
 I shall, therefore, only mention the mode in 
 which we got on. 
 
 Our first care, on coming to our ground, was 
 to shovel away the snow, which latterly was six 
 feet deep; we then cut down as many bass-wood 
 trees (a species of the pine), as we required, and 
 then proceeded to erect our shanty, {chantit). 
 This was done by fixing four forked sticks in the 
 ground, the higher in front, from which we con- 
 structed our roof. The bass-wood bark was peel- 
 ed and placed upon the roof, one layer lying in 
 the trough of the other, after the manner of a 
 tile. The trees were then split into rough boards, 
 which formed the back and sides of the mansion, 
 the front being open. The snow was then shovel- 
 led up so as to render all secure. Hemlock 
 boughs were then strewed on the frozen ground, 
 and blankets and buffalo skins over that. In 
 front was a long fire, composed of six large logs, 
 three at the bottom, two upon these, and one on 
 the top, on the principle on which shot is piled 
 in a battery ; in front, and within a yard of the 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 95 
 
 fire, was placed a log to prevent our feet being 
 scorched by the intense heat, and if, during the 
 night, our feet got cold, we had only to place 
 our heels on the top of the log, and in a few sec- 
 onds they were often more than comfortably 
 warm. 
 
 Two shanties were always placed opposite each 
 other, and this had a double advantage ; they 
 sheltered the wind from each other, and one fire 
 did for both. In the case of the officers of the 
 party, their servants occupied the opposite one, 
 so they were always within call. 
 
 The labor of cutting the road in deep snow was 
 great, and the expense proportionately enormous. 
 Our provisions had to be carried in on men's 
 backs, for the snow had not been broken in time 
 enough to admit of horses or even oxen, so that 
 one half of our men were employed in carrying, 
 or, as it is technically termed, packing provisions 
 for the other. The want of oxen produced an* 
 other enormous source of expenditure ; when a 
 log was cut it had to be drawn by drag ropes 
 out of the way, and thirty men could not per- 
 form, in the deep snow, what a yoke of oxen 
 could easily have performed in light snow or 
 none at all. When the snow got very deep, too, 
 we had, before felling a tree, to dig a pit round 
 it of sufficient diameter to allow a man to stand 
 in it and swing his axe. The expense of a war 
 surprises John Bull, and he only grumbles; were 
 he to enquire into the causes, it is to be hoped 
 he would be shy of so expensive an amusement, 
 where after all he does not get his fun for his 
 
96 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 money. I would undertake to-morrow to cut a 
 better road than we could possibly do, for forty 
 pounds a mile, and make money by it, — give me 
 timely warning and a proper season of the year, 
 whereas I am convinced that ,£2,500 to ,£3,000 
 did not pay for the one we cut. 
 
 Our amusements consisted in shooting part- 
 ridges and snaring the Canadian hare, which, as 
 it comes out of its hiding place chiefly at night, 
 can only be apprehended, as the game laws style 
 it, in that manner. The mode of so doing, being 
 caused by the necessities of the country, is 
 worthy of remark. These animals inhabit the 
 swamps, and make roads through the snow for 
 the purpose of coming out to where they can 
 browse. In these roads a spring is set, by bend- 
 ing down a young sapling, and two pegs are 
 driven into the ground on each side of the path, 
 and notches are cut, in which a yoke is neatly 
 set, from which the noose hangs down, much on 
 the principle of a mole trap. The hare jerking 
 the wire, relieves the yoke, and the sapling re- 
 sumes its erect position, carrying the hare eight 
 or ten feet above the surface of the snow, and 
 this secures him from becoming the prey of the 
 wolf or the fox, who, if he was within their 
 reach, would inevitably secure him before his le- 
 gitimate captor arrived in the morning. 
 
 In this manner passed the winter, monotonous- 
 ly enough it must be owned, but as we had full 
 employment we had no time to weary. When 
 we were about six or seven miles from the end 
 of our task, I started along the line to view the 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 97 
 
 harbour. In Canada, the line is marked through 
 the forest by what is termed a Surveyor's bla 
 (a corruption of the French balise,) seeing that 
 boughs are stuck in the snow to guide travellers. 
 The blaze consists in marking the trees on the 
 line of the road with an axe, and except to a 
 practised eye, it is easily lost. I had proceeded 
 along it some miles, when a covey of partridges 
 crossed my path ; I immediately followed them, 
 and after shooting several and losing sight of the 
 rest, I took off in the direction in which I thought 
 I should again cross the blaze. All my efforts 
 to find it, however, were unavailing, and as the 
 sun was fast declining, I had no other shift than 
 to go back on my own steps in the snow. I had 
 every motive to exertion, and about sun-set I 
 found myself about a mile and a quarter from 
 the camp ; but it soon grew so dark that I could 
 trace my way no further. I therefore halted, 
 and having beat a path of about twenty yards 
 in length in the snow, I walked backward and 
 forward, determined to keep moving all night. 
 This resolution I kept for some hours, I believe, 
 but at last I got so sleepy that I could persevere 
 no longer, besides I felt that stupor coming over 
 me which makes men indifferent as to their fate. 
 I therefore determined to use my remaining en- 
 ergies in giving myself every chance of life that 
 circumstances would admit of. 
 
 I took off my snow shoes, and poured a quan- 
 tity of rum into my moccasins ; I buttoned my 
 jacket, secured my fur cap about my ears, drew 
 on my fur gloves, and calling a little dog I had 
 
98 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 with me, and laying my hands over my face, I 
 made him lie on the top of all. 
 
 I slept most intensely sound, nor did I awake 
 till the morning sun was at least an hour high. 
 After two or three attempts I managed to rise ; 
 my feet were frozen, and one of my hands slight- 
 ly so, but both were so benumbed that I could 
 not fasten on my snow shoes ; I therefore had to 
 stick my toes in the holes of them, and shuffle 
 along as best I could. It had snowed about four 
 inches during the night, which was all in my fa- 
 vor. I managed to scramble on towards the 
 camp, but could not manage more than quarter 
 of a mile an hour. On my arrival there, some 
 old French Canadians undertook the medical 
 treatment of my case. They stripped off my 
 moccasins and stockings, and commenced rub- 
 bing my feet with snow. If there was any pain 
 in being frozen 1 was insensible to it, but of all 
 the tortures this world can devise, the resuscita- 
 tion was the worst I ever experienced. It was 
 that abominable sensation called tingling, in an 
 extreme degree, to such an extent, indeed, that 
 it more than once produced fainting, which un- 
 pleasant symptom they combated by pouring 
 down my throat a tin cup full of rum. When 
 the pain abated, they enveloped my feet in poul- 
 tices of boiled beech leaves, which they conceive 
 "the sovereignest thing in life" in such cases. 
 
 I was confined to my bed for three weeks, and 
 then was only able to go abroad by swathing my 
 feet in numerous folds of blanket. In a few weeks 
 more I was as well as ever. The poor little dog, 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR 99 
 
 Moses, the companion of my sufferings, was not 
 so fortunate. He reached the camp with difficul- 
 ty, and died the next day. 
 
 I thought at the time and since, that this was 
 the only instance of a white man sleeping out in 
 a Canadian winter night, without fire or cover- 
 ing of any kind, but whatever it might have been 
 then, we have had an instance here of a Canadian 
 French woman, who slept out under similar cir- 
 cumstances two consecutive nights this winter. 
 She, however, did not get off so cheap as I did, 
 for she has been confined to bed for four months 
 and lost both her feet, and from the extent of 
 the injury it is probable she will be some months 
 yet before she is out of the doctor \s hands. 
 
 It might be supposed that this kind of life 
 would generate disease, but the very reverse was 
 the case. In this, as well as all my other doings 
 in the woods, I have always found that where it 
 is possible to take proper care of the man, and 
 not expose them to wet, they are more healthy 
 than in quarters. It is only on military duty, 
 or with men who cannot or will not take cnre of 
 themselves, that disease takes place. I have 
 slept in the woods more than a year, at one 
 time and another, in the course of my life, and 
 with the foregoing provisos, never was better in 
 health or spirits under any circumstances. Ex- 
 cept casualties such as cutting feet, (a very com- 
 mon accident, even among experienced choppers,) 
 and bruises from falling trees, I had not a single 
 case worth noticing on this expedition. I ascribe 
 this mainly to the beneficial effects of the open 
 
IOO RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 air on the constitution, a cause which, however 
 much has been said about it, seems yet not to be 
 practically understood by the generality of man- 
 kind. Things went on pretty much the same till 
 we had nearly completed our business ; no labour 
 had been spared in perfecting our work. Bridges 
 had been thrown across streams in the depth of 
 winter, when officers and men had to stand for 
 hours up the middle in ice-cold water : ravines 
 had to be bridged when the logs had to be drag- 
 ged out of swamps through four feet of snow. 
 The month of March was far advanced when we 
 promised ourselves a pleasant summer in the 
 comfortable quarters that we meant to build for 
 ourselves at Penetanguishene, when all our anti- 
 cipations were set aside by the arrival of the ap- 
 palling intelligence that peace had been concluded 
 between His Majesty and the United States. This 
 showed us half pay staring us in the face ; how- 
 ever, soldiers have nothing to do but obey — we 
 were withdrawn — all the expenditure incurred 
 went for nothing ; we were marched to Toronto, 
 (then York,) and sent to join our respective regi- 
 ments. 
 
 My regiment had marched down the country 
 on its way to embark for Bngland ; I followed it, 
 and after remaining for two months at Sorel, 
 embarked in June, 1815, to go to Waterloo, but 
 so many unnecessary delays had taken place, 
 that though we did not sail till the sixth of June, 
 we might quite as well have left Quebec on the 
 sixth May, in which case we should unquestion- 
 ably have figured in the greatest action of mod- 
 
THE AMERICAN WAR IOI 
 
 ern times, and his grace, the great Duke, would 
 have been none the worse of from 15,000 to 20,- 
 000 of his veteran troops on whom he could de- 
 pend. It was fated otherwise, however ; thank 
 God he managed to do without us. We heard of 
 his victory at sea, and a frigate was sent out to 
 order us to Portsmouth instead of Antwerp. We 
 were some of us sent to augment the Army of 
 Occupation in France, others to various quarters 
 at home, where, after spending eighteen months 
 to my own great satisfaction, but of which a 
 narration might not interest my readers, I was 
 placed on half-pay, and as I only propose to 
 treat of Canada, I shall leave in oblivion the me- 
 morabilia of the next eleven and a half vears, 
 and in my next chapter take up Canada as I 
 found it in 1826. 
 
 * The Highlander is no equestrian — he can trot on his feet 
 fifty or sixty miles a day, with much greater ease to himself, and in 
 a shorter space of time, than he could ride the same distance. A 
 gentleman once sent his Highland servant a message on urgent 
 business, and to enable him to execute it sooner, gave him a hor~" 
 Donald did not return at the time expected, nor for long after it ; 
 at last his master, who was watching anxiously for him, discerned 
 him at along distance on the road on foot, creeping at a snail's 
 pace, and towing the reluctant quadruped by the bridle. On being 
 objurgated for his tardiness, he replied "he could have been here 
 twa three hours, but he has taight wi' tapeast," i.e. delayed, or 
 impeded by the horse. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Alexander, Sir J. E., 62. 
 
 America, 6, 8, 21. 
 
 American, 6, 15, 32, 36, 54, 67, 75, 90. 
 
 American Army, 9, 18, 41, 51. 
 
 American Commander, 18. 
 
 American Engineers, 79. 
 
 American Newspapers, 17. 
 
 American Officer, 78. 
 
 American Piquet, 73. 
 
 American Regulars, 17. 
 
 American Revolution, 8. 
 
 American Rifleman, 70. 
 
 American Sentries, 69. 
 
 American Teutonic Race, 21. 
 
 American U. E. Loyalists, 70. 
 
 Americans, 18, 19, 22, 23, 71, 90. 
 
 Antwerp, 101. 
 
 Army of Occupation in France, 101. 
 
 Asiatic, 78. 
 
 Atlantic, 32. 
 
 Bardolph, 29. 
 
 Baron of Bradwardine, 8. 
 
 Batavian, 21, 24. 
 
 Battle of the Falls, 81, 87. 
 
 Bay of Bengal, 6. 
 
 Bay of Biscay, 6. 
 
 Bengal, 31. 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 3. 
 
 British, 22, 36. 
 
I06 INDEX 
 
 British Army, 9, 59, 70. 
 
 British Crown, 21. 
 
 British North America, 47. 
 
 British Subject, 23. 
 
 Britishers, 35. 
 
 Brockville, 28. 
 
 Brotherton, 86. 
 
 Buffalo, 58. 
 
 Butler's Barracks, 53, 55. 
 
 Butler's Rangers, 53. 
 
 Byron, 3, 27. 
 
 Caesar-like, 5. 
 
 Canada, 1, 4, 9, 10, 14, 19, 21, 35, 44, 53, 62, 63, 
 
 72, 91, 97, 101. 
 Canadas, 10, 15. 
 Canadian, 10, 63, 96, 99. 
 Canadian Fencibles, 42, 91. 
 Canadian French Woman, 99. 
 Canadian Militia, 61. 
 Cape of Good Hope, 6, 9, 21, 86. 
 Catharine, 47. 
 Catholic, 32. 
 Catholics, 32. 
 
 Cavalry of Tarlton's Legion, 9. 
 Celtic Moonshee, 31. 
 Chelsea Pension, 26. 
 Chinsurhae, 21. 
 Chippawa, 56, 58, 87, 88. 
 Chrysler's Farm, 18, 21. 
 Clyde, 56. 
 Cobus, 24. 
 
 Cockburn, Colonel, 91. 
 Cockneys of London, 27. 
 Convan, Major General, 53. 
 
INDEX lO 
 
 Corbett, Mrs. Boyle, 58. 
 
 Cork, 35. 
 
 Cornwall, 19, 30, 36, 41. 
 
 Court of St. James, 47. 
 
 Court of St. Petersburg, 47. 
 
 Court of the Chateau, St. Louis, 47. 
 
 Covington, General, 18. 
 
 Drummond, Lieutenant Colonel, 62, 63, 82, 83, 86. 
 
 Drummond, Sir Gordon, 45, 49, 63, 86. 
 
 Dugald Dalgetty, 9. 
 
 Dundas, 91. 
 
 Dundas, Sir David, 69. 
 
 Dunkirk, 7, 9, 264. 
 
 Dutch, 22, 23, 24. 
 
 Dutchman, 21. 
 
 Edgar, 57. 
 
 Edinburgh, 32. 
 
 England, 26, 35, 60, 100. 
 
 English, 42. 
 
 Ettrick Shepherd, 2. 
 
 Europe, 61. 
 
 European, 78. 
 
 Falls of Niagara, 56, 57, 58. 
 
 Falstaff, 71. 
 
 Ferrara, 83. 
 
 Fort Erie, 53, 58, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 71, 76, 8l, 
 
 83, 86. 
 Fort Niagara, 62. 
 Fort Wellington, 20, 27, 28. 
 France, 7, 8. 
 Frazer Highlanders, 8. 
 French, 9, 12, 14, 97- 
 French Canadians, 98. 
 
108 INDEX 
 
 French King, 7. 
 French Service, 8, 
 Frenchmen, 10, II, 28. 
 Gaelic, 42. 
 Gaelic Bible, 31. 
 Gait, Mr., 48, 49. 
 Gananoque, 28. 
 Ganges, 21. 
 Garlic Hill, 6. 
 Garrison of Quebec, 6. 
 George II., 64. 
 George the Third, 78. 
 German Contingent, 68. 
 Glengarries, 65, 70, 73. 
 Glengarry, 19, 41 • 
 Glengarry Militia, 41. 
 Glengarry Regiment, 69. 
 Great Britain, 1, 8. 
 Greenock, 8. 
 Grenadier Island, 18. 
 Gulph of St. Lawrence, 6. 
 Hampshire, 3. 
 Highland, 31. 
 Highland Militia, 19. 
 Highlands, 7. 
 Holland, 21. 
 Hollander, 21. 
 Hindostan, 89. 
 Homer, 2. 
 Horace, 2, 27. 
 Hospital Mate, 26. 
 Hudson, 21. 
 
 Incorporated Militia, 72. 
 India, 9, 86. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Indian, 14, 57, 76, 93. 
 
 Indians, 28, 29, 76, yy, 78, 86. 
 
 Indian Tribes, 78. 
 
 lnvernesshire, 6. 
 
 Irish, 37. 
 
 Irish Brigade, 8. 
 
 Irish Subaltern, 25. 
 
 Irishman, 71. 
 
 Irishmen, 27. 
 
 Isle of Wight, 3, 4, 72. 
 
 Jacobite, 6. 
 
 Java, 9, 21. 
 
 John Bull, 11, 95. 
 
 Johnson, Sir William, 62. 
 
 Johnston, Dr., 30. 
 
 Keltic, 62, 63, 86. 
 
 King George, 71. 
 
 Kingston, 18, 20, 28, 36, 42, 43, 44, 48, 49. 
 
 Lachine, 14, 17, 20. 
 
 Lake Erie, 90. 
 
 Lake Huron, 90. 
 
 Lake of the Thousand Islands, 28. 
 
 Lake Ontario, 10, 43. 
 
 Lake Saint Clair, 90. 
 
 Lake Simcoe, 90, 91. 
 
 London, U. C, 62. 
 
 Lordship of Craigcrook, 21. 
 
 Lower Canada, 10, 12. 
 
 Lower Province, 36. 
 
 Machiavel, 21. 
 
 Malone, 19. 
 
 Mautass, 76, 77. 78. 
 
 Meg Dodds, 37. 
 
HO INDEX 
 
 Mohawk Indians, 22. 
 
 Mohawk River, 62. 
 
 Montreal, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 36. 
 
 Montreal General Hospital, 26. 
 
 Morrison, Colonel, 18. 
 
 Moses, 99. 
 
 Mother-bank, 4. 
 
 Muggridge, Major Spencer, 3. 
 
 Muscadines of Paris, 27. 
 
 McDonald, John, 41. 
 
 Napoleon, 8, 61, 74. 
 
 Newport, 3. 
 
 New World, 21. 
 
 Niagara, 22, 51, 56, 79. 
 
 Niagara District, 23. 
 
 Niagara Frontier, 31, 35, 42. 
 
 Niagara River, 51. 
 
 North America, 9, 23. 
 
 North American, 23. 
 
 North American Continent, 12. 
 
 Oeolus, 264. 
 
 Ogdensburg, 31. 
 
 Old Guard, 28. 
 
 Ontario, 36. 
 
 Parkhurst, 3. 
 
 Pattison, Captain, 75. 
 
 Peggy Bruce, 37, 3§, 39, 40, 41, 42. 
 
 Penetanguishene, 90, 100. 
 
 Peninsula, 63. 
 
 Perthshire, 86. 
 
 Plattsburg, 48. 
 
 Polar, 42. 
 
 Portsmouth, 85, 101. 
 
 Portuguese, 77. 
 
INDEX l I I 
 
 Prescott, 20. 
 
 Prevost, Sir George, 47, 48, 49. 
 Prince Charles Edward, 6. 
 Province, 47, 49. 
 Province of Canada, 47. 
 Provincial Parliament, 3«. 
 Prussian School, 68. 
 Quebec, 4, 6, 10, 13, 53, 100. 
 Queenston, 58, 79, 88, 89. 
 Queenston Heights, 51. 
 Regiment, 32nd, 62, 69. 
 Regiment, 82nd, 75, 76. 
 Regiment, 89th, 18, 87. 
 Regiment, 100th, 42, 88. 
 Regiment, 103rd, 84, 85. 
 Regiment, 104th, 62. 
 Regiment de Dillon, 8. 
 Revolutionary War, 21. 
 River Detroit, 90. 
 River Saint Clair, 90. 
 River St. Lawrence, II. 
 Ross, Sir John, 42. 
 Rotenburg, General de, 18. 
 Sackett's Harbour, 48. 
 Sacs, 78. 
 
 Salmon River, 18. 
 Scotch, 37. 
 
 Scotch Regiment of Guards, 7. 
 Scotland, 8, 53. 
 Scott, Colonel, 86. 
 Scott, Major General, 51. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 3. 
 Sheridan, Tom, 16. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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