CHAPTER XIII

FROM 1763 TO 1812

English law and Quebec--French rights guarded--Pontiac's war--Siege of

Detroit--Fight at Bloody Run--Michilimackinac falls--How Bouquet wins

victory--Return of captives--The peddlers--Methods of

Nor'westers--Traders invade the Up Country--Disaffection in

Canada--Canada invaded--Quebec invested--Montgomery's fight--"Rats in a

trap"--Relief at last--Tricks of ringsters--Coming of Loyalists--Life

in the backwoods

Quebec has fallen. As jackals gather to feast on the carcass of the

dead lion, so rallies a rabble of adventurers on the trail of the

victorious army. Sutlers, traders, teamsters, riffraff,--soldiers of

fortune,--stampede to Montreal and Quebec as to a new gold field. When

Major Robert Rogers, the English forest ranger, proceeds up the lakes

to take over the western fur posts,--Presqu' Isle, Detroit,

Michilimackinac,--he is followed by hosts of adventurers looking for

swift way to fortune by either the fur trade or by picking the bones of

the dead lion. Major Rogers, beating up Lake Ontario and Lake Erie

with two hundred bushwhackers, pausing in camp near modern Sandusky,

meets the renowned Ottawa warrior, Pontiac, who had fought with the

French against Braddock and now wants to know in voice of thunder what

all this talk about the French being conquered means; how _dare_ the

French, because _they_ have proved paltroons, deed away the Indian

lands of Canada? How dare Rogers, the white chief of the English

rangers, come here with his pale-faced warriors to Pontiac's land? How

Rogers answered the veteran red-skinned warrior is not told. All that

is known is--the French gave up their western furs with bad grace, and

the English commandants forgot to appease the wound to the Indians'

pride by the customary gifts over solemn powwow. At Detroit and

Michilimackinac the French quietly withdraw from the palisades and

build their white-washed cottages outside the limits of the fort--2500

French habitants there are at Detroit.

If the four or five hundred English adventurers who swarmed to Canada

on the heels of the English army thought to batten on the sixty

thousand defeated French inhabitants, far otherwise thought and decreed

the English generals, Sir Jeffrey {277} Amherst, and Murray, who

succeeded him. "You will observe that the French are British subjects

as much as we are, and treat them accordingly," ruled Amherst; and

General Murray, who practically became the first governor of Canada on

Amherst's withdrawal, at once set himself to establish justice.

[Illustration: MAJOR ROBERT ROGERS]

No more forced labor! No more carrion birds of the official classes,

like Bigot, fattening on the poor habitants! British government in

Canada for the next few years is known as the period of military rule.

At Quebec, at Three Rivers, at Montreal, the commanding officers

established martial law with biweekly courts; and in the parishes the

local French officers, or seigneurs, are authorized to hear civil

cases. By the terms of surrender the people have been guaranteed their

religious liberty; and the Treaty of Paris, which cedes all Canada to

England in 1763, repeats this guarantee, though it leaves a thorn of

trouble in the flesh of England by reserving to France for the benefit

of the Grand Banks fishermen the Islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, as

well as shore rights of fishing on the west coast of Newfoundland.

Also, the proprietary rights of Jesuits, Sulpicians, Franciscans, are

to remain in abeyance for the pleasure of the English crown. The

rights of the sisterhoods are at once confirmed.

{278} One of General Murray's first acts as governor is to convey

gentle hint to the Abbé Le Loutre, now released from prison and come

back to Canada, that his absence will be appreciated by the government.

Within a few years there are five hundred English residents in Montreal

and Quebec; and now trouble begins for the government,--that wrangle

between English and French, between Protestant and Catholic, which is

to go on for a hundred years and retard Canada's progress by a century.

[Illustration: NORTH AMERICA AT THE CLOSE OF THE FRENCH WARS, 1763]

Being British-born subjects, the few hundred demand that the Governor

call an assembly,--an elective assembly; but by the laws of England,

Roman Catholics must abjure their religion before they can take office,

and by the Treaty of Paris the Catholics of Canada have been guaranteed

the freedom of their religion. To grant an elective assembly now would

mean that the representatives of the five hundred English traders would

rule over 70,000 French. When accusing the French Catholics of Quebec

of remaining a solidarity so that they may wield the balance of power,

it is well to remember how and when the quarrel began. Murray sides

with the French and stands like a rock for their right. He will have

no elective assembly under present conditions; and he puts summary stop

to the business English magistrates and English bailiffs have hatched

against the rights of the habitant,--of seizing lands for debt at a

time when money is scarce, summoning the debtor simultaneously to two

different courts, then charging such outrageous fees that the debtor's

land is sold for the fees, to be bought in by the rascal ring who have

arranged the plot. Ordinances are still proclaimed in primitive

fashion by the crier going through the streets shouting the laws to

beat of drum; but as the crier {279} shouts in English, the habitants

know no more of the laws than if he shouted in Greek.

As Murray opposes the clamor of the English minority, the English

petition the home government for Murray's recall. In the light of the

fact that there were no schools at all in Canada except the Catholic

seminaries, and that of the five hundred English residents only two

hundred had permanent homes in Montreal and Quebec, it is rather

instructive to read as one of the grievances of the English minority

"_that the only teachers in Canada were Catholics_."

The governor-generalship is offered to Chatham, the great statesman, at

5000 pounds a year. Chatham refusing the position, there comes in 1768

as governor, at 1200 pounds a year, Sir Guy Carleton, fellow-soldier

and friend of Wolfe in the great war, who follows in Murray's

footsteps, stands like a rock for the rights of the French, orders

debtors released from jail, fees reduced, and a stoppage of forced land

sales. Bitter is the disappointment to the land jobbers, who had

looked for a partisan in Carleton; doubly bitter, for Carleton goes one

better than Murray. For years the French government had issued paper

money in Quebec. After the conquest seventeen millions of these

worthless government promissory notes were outstanding in the hands of

the habitants. Knowing that the paper money is to be redeemed by the

English government, English jobbers are now busy buying up the paper

among the poor French at fifteen cents on the dollar. Carleton sends

the town crier from parish to parish, warning the habitants to hold

their money and register the amounts with the magistrates till the

whole matter can be arranged between England and France.

The first newspaper is established now in Quebec, _The Quebec Gazette_,

printed in both English and French. Also the first trouble now arises

from having ceded France the two tiny islands south of Newfoundland,

St. Pierre and Miquelon. By English navigation laws, all trade must

be in English ships. Good! The smugglers slip into St. Pierre with a

cargo. By night a ship with a white sail slips out of St. Pierre with

that {280} cargo. At Gaspé the sail of that ship is red; at Saguenay

it is yellow; at Quebec it is perhaps brown. Ostensibly the ship is a

fishing smack, but it leaves other cargo than fish at the habitant

hamlets of the St. Lawrence; and the smuggling from St. Pierre that

began in Carleton's time is continued to-day in the very same way.

[Illustration: GENERAL MURRAY, FIRST GOVERNOR OF QUEBEC]

And Guy Carleton, though he is an Englishman and owes his appointment

to the complaints of the English minority against Murray, remains

absolutely impartial. Good reason for the wisdom of his policy. There

are rumblings from the New England colonies that forewarn the coming

earthquake. For years friction has been growing between the mother

country and the colonies. The story of the Revolution does not belong

to the story of Canada. For years far-sighted statesmen had predicted

that the minute New England ceased to fear New France, ceased to need

England's protection, that minute the growing friction would flame in

open war. Carleton foresaw that to pander to the English minority

would sacrifice the loyalty of the French. Thus he reported to the

home government, and the Quebec Act of 1774 came to the relief of the

French. By it Canada's boundaries were extended across the region of

the Ohio to the Mississippi. French laws were restored {281} in all

civil actions. English law was to rule in criminal cases, which meant

trial by jury. The French are relieved from oaths of office and

enabled to serve on the jury. Also, the Catholic clergy is entitled to

collect its usual tithe of one twenty-sixth from the Catholics. An

elective assembly is refused for reasons that are plain, but a

legislative council is granted, to be appointed by the crown. For the

expense of government a slight tax is levied on liquor; but as the St.

Pierre smuggling is now flourishing, the tax docs not begin to meet the

cost of government, and the difference is paid from the imperial

treasury. However badly the imperial government blundered with the New

England colonies, her treatment of Quebec was an object lesson in

colonizing to the world. Had she treated her New England colonies half

as justly as she treated Quebec, British America might to-day extend to

Mexico. Had she treated Quebec half as unjustly as she treated her own

offspring of New England, the United States might to-day extend to the

Arctic Circle. The man who saved Canada to England, in the first place

by wisdom, in the second place by war, was Sir Guy Carleton.

While the English and French, Protestant and Catholic, wrangle for

power in Quebec there rages on the frontier one of the most devastating

Indian wars known to American history. Not for nothing had Pontiac

drawn himself to his full height and defied Major Rogers down on Lake

Erie. From tribe to tribe the lithe coureurs ran, naked but for the

breechcloth, painted as for war, carrying in one hand the tomahawk

dipped in blood, in the other the wampum belt of purple, typifying war.

The French had deeded away the Indian lands to the English! The news

ran like wildfire, ran by moccasin telegram from Montreal up Ottawa

River to Michilimackinac, from Niagara westward to Detroit, and

southward to Presqu' Isle and all that chain of forts leading

southwestward to the Mississippi. Was it a "Conspiracy of Pontiac," as

it has been called? Hardly. It was more one of those general

movements of unrest, of discontent, of misunderstanding, that but

awaits the appearance of {282} a brave leader to become a torrent of

destruction. Pontiac, the Ottawa chief, was such a leader, and to his

standard rallied Indians from Virginia, from the Mississippi, from Lake

Superior. Of the universal unrest among the Indians the English were

not ignorant, but they failed to realize its significance; failed, too,

to realize that the French fur traders, cast out of the western forts

and now roaming the wilds, fanned the flame, gave presents of gunpowder

and firearms to the savages, and egged the hostiles on against the new

possessors of Canada, in order to divert the fur trade to French

traders still in Louisiana. Down at Miami, southwest of Lake Erie,

Ensign Holmes hears in March of 1763 that the war belt has been carried

to the Illinois. Up at Detroit, in May, Pontiac is camped on the east

side of the river with eight hundred hunters. Daily the French

farmers, who supply the fort with provisions, carry word to Major

Gladwin that the Indians are acting strangely, holding long and secret

powwow, borrowing files to saw off the barrels of their muskets short.

A French woman, who has visited the Indians across the river for a

supply of maple sugar, comes to Gladwin on May 5 with the same story.

From eight hundred, the Indians increase to two thousand. Old

Catherine, a toothless squaw, comes shaking as with the palsy to the

fort, and with mumbling words warns Gladwin to "Beware, beware!" So

does a young girl whose fine eyes have caught the fancy of Gladwin

himself. Breaking out with bitter weeping, she covers her head with

her shawl and bids her white lover have a care how he meets Pontiac in

council. Gladwin himself was a seasoned campaigner, who had escaped

the hurricane of death with Braddock and had also served under Amherst

at Montreal. In his fort are one hundred and twenty soldiers and forty

traders. At the wharf lie the two armed schooners, _Beaver_ and

_Gladwin_. When Pontiac comes with his sixty warriors Gladwin is ready

for him. In the council house the warriors seat themselves, weapons

concealed under blankets; but when Pontiac raises the wampum belt that

was to be the signal for the massacre to begin, Major Gladwin, never

moving his light blue eyes from {283} the snaky gleam of the Indian,

waves his hand, and at the motion there is a roll of drums, a grounding

of the sentry's arms, a trampling of soldiers outside, a rush as of

white men marching. Pontiac is dumfounded and departs without giving

the signal. Back in his cabin of rushes across the river he rages like

a maniac and buries a tomahawk in the skull of the old squaw Catherine.

Monday, May 9, at ten o'clock he comes again, followed by a rabble of

hunters. The gates are shut in his face. He shouts for admittance.

The sentry opens the wicket and in traders' vernacular bids him go

about his business. There is a wild war yell. The siege of Detroit

begins.

[Illustration: SETTLEMENTS ON THE DETROIT RIVER]

The story of that siege would fill volumes. For fifteen months it

lasted, the French remaining neutral, selling provisions to both sides,

Gladwin defiant inside his palisades, the Indians persistent as enraged

hornets. Two English officers who have been out hunting are waylaid,

murdered, skinned, the skin sewed into powder pouches, the bloody

carcasses sent drifting down on the flood of waters past the fort

walls. Desperately in need of provisions from the French, Gladwin

consents to temporary truce while Captain Campbell and others go out to

parley with the Indians. {284} Gladwin obtains cart loads of

provisions during the parley, but Pontiac violates the honor of war by

holding the messengers captive. Burning arrows are shot at the fort

walls. Gladwin's men sally out by night, hack down the orchards that

conceal the enemy, burn all outbuildings, and come back without losing

a man. Nightly, too, lapping the canoe noiselessly across water with

the palm of the hand, one of the French farmers comes with fresh

provisions. Gladwin has sent a secret messenger, with letter in his

powder pouch, through the lines of the besiegers to Niagara for aid.

May 30, moving slowly, all sails out, the English flag flying from the

prow, comes a convoy of sailboats up the river. Cheer on cheer rent

the air. The soldiers at watch in the galleries inside the palisades

tossed their caps overhead, but as the ships came nearer the whites

were paralyzed with horror. Silence froze the cheer on the parted

lips. Indian warriors manned the boats. The convoy of ninety-six men

had been cut to pieces, only a few soldiers escaping back to Niagara, a

few coming on, compelled by the Indians to act as rowers. As the boats

passed the fort, whoops of derision, wild war chants, eldritch screams,

rose from the Indians. One desperate white captive rose like a flash

from his place at the rowlocks, caught his Indian captor by the scuff

of the neck and threw him into the river; but the redskin grappled the

other in a grip of death. Turning over and over, locked in each

other's arms, the hate of the inferno in their faces, soldier and

Indian swept down to watery death in the river tide. Taking advantage

of the confusion, and under protection of the fort guns, one of the

other captives sprang into the river and succeeded in swimming safely

to the fort. Terrible was the news he brought. All the other forts

south of Niagara, with the exception of Fort Pitt,--Miami, St. Joseph,

Presqu' Isle,--lay in ashes. From some not a man had escaped to tell

the story.

That night it was pitch-dark,--soft, velvet, warm summer darkness.

From the fort the soldiers could see the sixty captives from the convoy

burning outside at the torture stakes. Then as gray morning came

mangled corpses floated past on the river tide. June 18 another vessel

glides up the river with help, but {285} the garrison is afraid of a

second disaster, for eight hundred warriors have lain in ambush along

the river. Gladwin orders a cannon fired. The boat fires back answer,

but the wind falls and she is compelled to anchor for the night below

the fort. Sixty soldiers armed to the teeth are on board; but the

captain is determined to out-trick the Indians, and he permits only

twelve of his men at a time on deck. Darkness has barely fallen on the

river before the waters are alive with canoes, and naked warriors

clamber to the decks like scrambling monkeys, so sure they have

outnumbered their prey that they forget all caution. At the signal of

a hammer knock on deck,--rap--rap--rap,--three times short and sharp,

up swarm the soldiers from the hatchway. Fourteen Indians dropped on

the deck in as many seconds. Others were thrown on bayonet points into

the river. It is said that after the fight of a few seconds on the

ship the decks looked like a butcher's shambles. Finally the schooner

anchored at Detroit, to the immense relief of the beleaguered garrison.

So elated were the English, one soldier dashed from a sally port and

scalped a dying Indian in full view of both sides. Swift came Indian

vengeance. Captain Campbell, the truce messenger, was hacked to

pieces. By July 28, Dalzell has come from Niagara with nearly two

hundred men, including Rogers, the famous Indian fighter. Both Dalzell

and Rogers are mad for a rush from the fort to deal one crushing blow

to the Indians. Here the one mistake of the siege was made. Gladwin

was against all risk, for the Indians were now dropping off to the

hunting field, but Dalzell and Rogers were for punishing them before

they left. In the midst of a dense night fog the English sallied from

the fort at two o'clock on the 31st of July for Pontiac's main camp,

about two miles up the river, boats rowing upstream abreast the

marchers. It was hot and sultry. The two hundred and fifty

bushrangers marched in shirt sleeves, two abreast. A narrow footbridge

led across a brook, since known as Bloody Run, to cliffs behind which

the Indians were intrenched. Along the trail were the whitewashed

cottages of the French farmers, who stared from their windows in their

nightcaps, amazed beyond speech at the rashness of the {286} English.

On a smaller scale it was a repetition of Braddock's defeat on the

Ohio. Indians lay in ambush behind every house, every shrub, in the

long grass. They only waited till Dalzell's men had crossed the bridge

and were charging the hill at a run. Then the war whoop shrilled both

to fore and to rear. The Indians doubled up on their trapped foe from

both sides. Rogers' Rangers dashed for hiding in a house. The drum

beat retreat. Under cover of Rogers' shots from one side, shots from

the boats on the other, Dalzell's men escaped at a panic run back over

the trail with a loss of some sixty dead. In September came more ships

with more men, again to be ambushed at the narrows, and again to reach

Detroit, as the old record says, "bloody as a butcher's shop." So the

siege dragged on for more than a year at Detroit. Winter witnessed a

slight truce to fighting, for starvation drove the Indians to the

hunting field; but May saw Pontiac again encamped under the walls of

Detroit till word came from the French on the lower Mississippi in

October, definitely and for all, they would not join the Indians. Then

Pontiac knew his cause was lost.

Up at Michilimackinac similar scenes were enacted. Major Etherington

and Captain Leslie had some thirty-five soldiers. There were also

hosts of traders outside the walls, among whom was Alexander Henry of

Montreal. Word had come of Pontiac at Detroit, but Etherington did not

realize that the uprising was general. June 4 was the King's birthday.

Shops had been closed. Flags blew above the fort. Gates were wide

open. Squaws with heads under shawls sat hunched around the house

steps, with that concealed beneath their shawls which the English did

not guess. All the men except Henry, who was writing letters, and some

Frenchmen, who understood the danger signs, had gone outside the gates

to watch a fast and furious game of lacrosse. Again and again the ball

came bounding towards the fort gates, only to be whisked to the other

end of the field by a deft toss, followed by the swift runners. No one

was louder in applause than Etherington. The officers were completely

off guard. Suddenly the crowds swayed, gave way, opened; . . . {287}

and down the field towards the fort gates surged the players. A

dexterous pitch! The ball was inside the fort. After it dashed the

Indians. In a flash weapons were grasped from the shawls of the

squaws. Musket and knife did the rest. When Henry heard the war whoop

and looked from a window he saw Indian warriors bending to drink the

blood of hearts that were yet warm. For two days Henry lived in the

rubbish heap of the attic in the house of Langlade, a pioneer of

Wisconsin. Of the whites at Michilimackinac only twenty escaped death,

and they were carried prisoners to the Lower Country for ransom.

From Virginia to Lake Superior such was the Indian war known as

Pontiac's Campaign. Fort Pitt held out like Detroit. Niagara was too

strong for assault, but in September twenty-four soldiers, who had been

protecting _portage_ past the falls, were waylaid and driven over the

precipice at the place called Devil's Hole. More soldiers sent to the

rescue met like fate, horses and wagons being stampeded over the rocks,

seventy men in all being hurled to death in the wild canyon.

Amherst, who was military commander at this time, was driven nearly out

of his senses. A foe like the French, who would stand and do battle,

he could fight; but this phantom foe, that vanished like mist through

the woods, baffled the English soldier. In less than six months two

thousand whites had been slain; and Amherst could not even find his

foe, let alone strike him. "_Can we not inoculate them with smallpox,

or set bloodhounds to track them_?" he writes distractedly.

By the summer of 1764 the English had taken the war path. Bradstreet

was to go up the lakes with twelve hundred men, Bouquet, with like

forces, to follow the old Pennsylvania road to the Ohio, both generals

to unite somewhere south of Lake Erie. Of Bradstreet the least said

the better. He had done well in the great war when he captured Fort

Frontenac almost without a blow; but now he strangely played the fool.

He seemed to think that peace, peace at any price, was the object,

whereas peace that is not a victory is worthless with the Indian.

Deputies met him on the 12th of August near Presqu' Isle, Lake Erie.

{288} They carried no wampum belts and were really spies. Without

demanding reparation, without a word as to restoring harried captives,

without hostages for good conduct, Bradstreet entered into a fool's

peace with his foes, proceeded up to Detroit, and was back at Niagara

by winter; though he must have realized the worthlessness of the

campaign when his messengers sent to the Illinois were ambushed.

[Illustration: BOUQUET]

When Bouquet heard of the sham peace he was furious and repudiated

Bradstreet's treaty in toto. Bouquet was a veteran of the great war,

and knew bushfighting from seven years' experience on Pennsylvania

frontiers. Slowly, with his fifteen hundred rangers and five hundred

Highlanders, express riders keeping the trail open from fort to fort,

scouts to fore, Bouquet moved along the old army trail used by Forbes

to reach Fort Pitt. Friendly Indians had been warned to keep green

branches as signals in the muzzles of their guns. All others were to

be shot without mercy. Indians vanished before his march like mist

before the sun. August 5 found Bouquet south of Fort Pitt at a place

known as Bushy Run. The scouts had gone ahead to prepare nooning for

the army at the Run. In seven hours the men had marched seventeen

miles spite of sweltering heat; but at one, just as the thirsty columns

were nearing the rest place, the crack--crack--crack of rifle shots to

the fore set every man's blood jumping. From quick march they broke to

a run, priming guns, ball in mouth as they ran. A moment later the old

trick of Braddock's ambush was being repeated, but this time the

Indians were dealing with a seasoned man. Bouquet swung his fighters

in a circle round the stampeding horses and provision wagons. The heat

was terrific, the men almost mad with thirst, the horses neighing and

plunging and breaking away to the woods; and the army stood, a

red-coated, tartan-plaid target for invisible foes! By this time the

men were fighting as Indians fight--breaking ranks, jumping from tree

to tree. It is n't easy to keep men standing as targets when they

can't get at the foe; but Bouquet, riding from place to place, kept his

men in hand till darkness screened them. Sixty had fallen. A circular

barricade {289} was built of flour bags. Inside this the wounded were

laid, and the army camped without water. The agonies of that night

need not be told. Here the neighing of horses would bring down a

clatter of bullets aimed in the dark; and the groans of the wounded,

trampled by the stampeding cavalcade, would mingle with the screams of

terror from the horses. The night continued hot almost as day in the

sultry forest, and the thirst with both man and beast became anguish.

Another such day and another such night, and Bouquet could foresee his

fate would be worse than Braddock's. Passing from man to man, he gave

the army their instructions for the next day. They would form in three

platoons, with the center battalion advanced to the fore, as if to lead

attack. Suddenly the center was to feign defeat and turn as if in

panic flight. It was to be guessed that the Indians would pursue

headlong. Instantly the flank battalions were to sweep through the

woods in wide circle and close in on the rear of the savages. Then the

fleeing center was to turn. The savages would be surrounded. Daybreak

came with a cracking of shots from ambush. Officers and men carried

out instructions exactly as Bouquet had planned. At ten o'clock the

center column broke ranks, wavered, turned, . . . fled in wild panic!

With the whooping of a wolf pack in full cry, the savages burst from

ambush in pursuit. The sides deployed. A moment later the center had

turned to fight the pursuer, {290} and the Highlanders broke from the

woods, yelling their slogan, with broadswords cutting a terrible

hand-to-hand swath. Sixty Indians were slashed to death in as many

seconds. Though the British lost one hundred and fifteen, killed and

wounded, the Indians were in full flight, blind terror at their heels.

The way was now open to Port Pitt, but Bouquet did not dally inside the

palisades. On down the Ohio he pursued the panic-stricken savages,

pausing neither for deputies nor reënforcements. At Muskingum Creek

the Indians sent back the old men to sue, sue abjectedly, for peace at

any cost.

Bouquet met them with the stern front that never fails to win respect.

They need not palm off their lie that the fault lay with the foolish

young warriors. If the old chiefs would not control the young braves,

then the whole tribe, the whole Indian race, must pay the penalty. In

terror the deputies hung their heads. He would not even discuss the

terms of peace, Bouquet declared, till the Indians restored every

captive,--man, woman, and child, even the child of Indian parentage

born in captivity. The captives must be given suitable clothing,

horses, and presents. Twelve days only would he permit them to gather

the captives. If man, woman, or child were lacking on the twelfth day,

he would pursue them and punish them to the uttermost ends of earth.

The Indians were dumfounded. These were not soft words. Not thus had

the French spoken, with the giving of manifold presents. But powder

was exhausted. No more was coming from the French traders of the

Mississippi. Winter was approaching, and the Indians must hunt or

starve. Again the coureurs are sent spurring the woods from tribe to

tribe with wampum belts, but this time the belts are the white bands of

peace. While Bouquet waits he sends back over the trail for hospital

nurses to receive the captives, and the army is set knocking up rude

barracks of log and thatch in the wilderness. Then the captives begin

to come. It is a scene for the brush of artist, for all frontiersmen

who have lost friends have rallied to Bouquet's camp, hoping against

hope and afraid to hope. There is the mother, whose infant child has

been snatched from her arms in {291} some frontier attack, now scanning

the lines as they come in, mad with hope and fear. There is the

husband, whose wife has been torn away to some savage's tepee,

searching, searching, searching among the sad, wild-eyed, ill-clad

rabble for one with some resemblance to the wife he loved. There is

the father seeking lost daughters and afraid of what he may find; and

there are the captives themselves, some of the women demented from the

abuse they have received. England may have spent her millions to

protect her colonies, but she never spent in anguish what these rude

frontiersmen suffered at Bouquet's camp.

[Illustration: RETURN OF THE ENGLISH CAPTIVES (From a contemporary

print)]

So ended what is known as the Pontiac War. Up at Detroit in 1765

Pontiac, in council with the whites, explains that he has listened to

bad advice, but now his heart is right. "Father, you have stopped the

rum barrel while we talked," he says grimly; "as our business is

finished, we request that you open the barrel, that we may drink and be

merry."

Not a very heroic curtain fall to a dramatic life. But pause a bit:

the Pontiac War was the last united stand of a doomed race against the

advance of the conquering alien; and the Indian is defeated, and he

knows it, and he acknowledges it, and he {292} drowns his despair in a

vice, and so he passes down the Long Trail of time with his face to the

west, doomed, hopeless, pushed westward and ever west.

Pontiac goes down the Mississippi to his friends, the French fur

traders of St. Louis. One morning in 1767, after a drinking bout, he

is found across the river, lying in camp, with his skull split to the

neck. By the sword he had lived, by the sword he perished. Was the

murder the result of a drunken quarrel, or did some frenzied

frontiersman with deathless woes bribe the hand of the assassin? The

truth of the matter is unknown, and Pontiac's death remains a theme for

fiction.

What with struggles for power and Indian wars, one might think that the

few hundred English colonists of Quebec and Montreal had all they could

do. Not so: their quarrels with the French Catholics and fights with

the Indians are merely incidental to the main aim of their lives, to

the one object that has brought them stampeding to Canada as to a new

gold field, namely, quick way to wealth; and the only quick way to

wealth was by the fur trade. In the wilderness of the Up Country

wander some two or three thousand cast-off wood rovers of the old

French fur trade. As the prodigals come down the Ottawa, down the

Detroit, down the St. Lawrence, the English and Scotch merchants of

Montreal and Quebec meet them. Mighty names those merchants have in

history now,--McGillivrays and MacKenzies and McGills and Henrys and

MacLeods and MacGregors and Ogilvies and MacTavishes and Camerons,--but

at this period of the game the most of them were what we to-day would

call petty merchants or peddlers. In their storehouses--small,

one-story, frame affairs--were packed goods for trade. With these

goods they quickly outfitted the French bushrover--$3000 worth to a

canoe--and packed the fellow back to the wilderness to trade on shares

before any rival firm could hire him. Within five years of Wolfe's

victory in 1759 all the French bushrovers of the Up Country had been

reëngaged by merchants of Montreal and Quebec.

{293}

[Illustration: MONTREAL (From a contemporary print)]

Then imperceptible changes came,--the changes that work so silently

they are like destiny. Because it is unsafe to let the rascal

bushrovers and voyageurs go off by themselves with $3000 worth to the

canoe load, the merchants began to accompany them westward.

"Bourgeois," the voyageurs call their outfitters. Then, because

success in fur trade must be kept secret, the merchants cease to have

their men come down to Montreal. They meet them with the goods

halfway, at La Vérendrye's old stamping ground on Lake Superior, first

at the place called Grand Portage, then, when the United States

boundary is changed in 1783, at Kaministiquia, or modern Fort William,

named after William McGillivray. Pontiac's War puts a stop to the new

trade, but by 1766 the merchants are west again. Henry goes up the

Saskatchewan to the Forks, and comes back with such wealth of furs he

retires a rich magnate of Montreal. The Frobisher brothers strike for

new hunting ground. So do Peter Pond and Bostonnais Pangman, and the

MacKenzies, Alexander {294} and Roderick. Instead of following up the

Saskatchewan, they strike from Lake Winnipeg northward for Churchill

River and Athabasca, and they bring out furs that transform those

peddlers into merchant princes. A little later the chief buyer of the

Montreal furs is one John Jacob Astor of New York. Then another

change. Rivalry hurts fur trade. Especially do different prices

demoralize the Indians. The Montreal merchants pool their capital and

become known as the Northwest Fur Company. They now hire their

voyageurs outright on a salary. No man is paid less than what would be

$500 in modern money, with board; and any man may rise to be clerk,

trader, wintering partner, with shares worth 800 pounds ($4000), that

bring dividends of two and three hundred per cent. The petty merchants

whom Murray and Carleton despised became in twenty years the opulent

aristocracy of Montreal, holding the most of the public offices,

dominating the government, filling the judgeships, and entertaining

with a lavish hospitality that put vice-regal splendor in the shade.

The Beaver Club is the great rendezvous of the Montreal partners.

"Fortitude in Distress" is the motto and lords of the ascendant is

their practice. No man, neither governor nor judge, may ignore these

Nor'westers, and it may be added they are a law unto themselves. One

example will suffice. A French merchant of Montreal took it into his

head to have a share of this wealth-giving trade. He was advised to

pool his interests with the Nor'westers, and he foolishly ignored the

advice. In camp at Grand Portage on Lake Superior he is told all the

country hereabout belongs to the Nor'westers, and _he_ must decamp.

"Show me proofs this country is yours," he answers. "Show me the title

deed and I shall decamp."

Next night a band of Nor'westers, voyageurs well plied with rum, came

down the strand to the intruder's tents. They cut his tents to

ribbons, scatter his goods to the four winds, and beat his voyageurs

into insensibility.

"Voila! there are our proofs," they say.

The French merchant hastens down to Montreal to bring lawsuit, but the

judges, you must remember, are shareholders in the {295} Northwest

Company, and many of the Legislative Council are Nor'westers. What

with real delays and sham delays and put-offs and legal fees, justice

is a bit tardy. While the case is pending the French merchant tries

again. This time he is not molested at Fort William. They let him

proceed on his way up the old trail to Lake of the Woods, the trail

found by La Vérendrye; and halfway through the wilderness, where the

cataract offers only one path for portage, the Frenchman finds

Nor'-westers building a barricade; he tears it down. They build

another; he tears that down. They build a third; fast as he tears

down, they build up. He must either go back baffled by these suave,

smiling, lawless rivals, or fight on the spot to the death; but there

is neither glory nor wealth being killed in the wilderness, where not

so much as the sands of the shore will tell the true story of the

crime. So the French merchant compromises, sells out to the

Nor'westers at cost plus carriage, and retires to the St. Lawrence

cursing British justice.

It may be guessed that the sudden eruption of "the peddlers," these

bush banditti, these Scotch soldiers of fortune with French bullies for

fighters, roused the ancient and honorable Hudson's Bay Company from

its half-century slumber of peace. Anthony Hendry, who had gone up the

Saskatchewan far as the Blackfoot country of the foothills, they had

dismissed as a liar in the fifties because he had reported that he had

seen _Indians on horseback_, whereas the sleepy factors of the bay

ports knew very well they never saw any kind of Indians except Indians

in canoes; but now in the sixties it is noted by the company that not

so many furs are coming down from the Up Country. It is voted "the

French Canadian peddlers of Montreal" be notified of the company's

exclusive monopoly to the trade of these regions. One Findley is sent

to Quebec to look after the Hudson's Bay Company's rights; but while

the English company _talks_ about its rights, the Nor'westers go in the

field and _take_ them.

The English company rubs its eyes and sits up and scratches its heavy

head, and passes an order that Mr. Moses Norton, chief {296} factor of

Churchill, send Mr. Samuel Hearne to explore the Up Country. Hearne

has heard of Far-Away-Metal River, far enough away in all conscience

from the Canadian peddlers; and thither in December, 1770, he finds his

way, after two futile attempts to set out. Matonabbee, great chief of

the Chippewyans, is his guide,--Matonabbee, who brings furs from the

Athabasca, and is now accompanied by a regiment of wives to act as

beasts of burden in the sledge traces, camp servants, and cooks.

Hearne sets out in midwinter in order to reach the Coppermine River in

summer, by which he can descend to the Arctic in canoes. Storm or

cold, bog or rock, Matonabbee keeps fast pace, so fast he reaches the

great caribou traverse before provisions have dwindled and in time for

the spring hunt. Here all the Indian hunters of the north gather twice

a year to hunt the vast herds of caribou going to the seashore for

summer, back to the Up Country for the winter, herds in countless

thousands upon thousands, such multitudes the clicking of the horns

sounds like wind in a leafless forest, the tramp of the hoofs like

galloping cavalry. Store of meat is laid up for Hearne's voyage by

Matonabbee's Indians; and a band of warriors joins the expedition to go

down Coppermine River. If Hearne had known Indian customs as well as

he knew the fur trade, he would have known that it boded no good when

Matonabbee ordered the women to wait for his return in the Athabasca

country of the west. Absence of women on the march meant only one of

two things, a war raid or hunt, and which it was soon enough Hearne

learned. They had come at last, on July 12, 1771, on Coppermine River,

a mean little stream flowing over rocky bed in the Barren Lands of the

Little Sticks (Trees), when Hearne noticed, just above a cataract, the

domed tepee tops of an Eskimo camp. It was night, but as bright as day

in the long light of the North. Instantly, before Hearne could stop

them, his Indians had stripped as for war, and fell upon the sleeping

Eskimo in ruthless massacre. Men were brained as they dashed from the

domed tents, women speared as they slept, children dispatched with less

thought than the white man would give to the killing of a fly. In vain

Hearne, {297} with tears in his eyes, begged the Indians to stop. They

laughed him to scorn, and doubtless wondered where he thought they

yearly got the ten thousand beaver pelts brought to Churchill. A few

days later, July 17, 1771, Hearne stood on the shores of the Arctic,

heaving to the tide and afloat with ice; but the horrors of the

massacre had robbed him of an explorer's exultation, though he was

first of pathfinders to reach the Arctic overland. Matonabbee led

Hearne back to Churchill in June of 1772 by a wide westward circle

through the Athabasca Bear Lake Country, which the Hudson's Bay people

thus discovered only a few years before the Nor'westers came.

[Illustration: SAMUEL HEARNE]

No longer dare the Hudson's Bay Company ignore the Up Country. Hearne

is sent to the Saskatchewan to build Fort Cumberland, and Matthew

Cocking is dispatched to the country of the Blackfeet, modern Alberta,

to beat up trade, where his French voyageur, Louis Primeau, deserts him

bag and baggage, to carry the Hudson's Bay furs off to the Nor'westers.

No longer does the English company slumber on the shores of its frozen

sea. Yearly are voyageurs sent inland,--"patroons of the woods," given

bounty to stay in the wilds, luring any trade from the Nor'westers.

The Quebec Act, guaranteeing the rights of the French Canadians, had

barely been put in force before the Congress of the {298} revolting

English colonies sent up proclamations to be posted on the church doors

of the parishes, calling on the French to throw off the British yoke,

to join the American colonies, "to seize the opportunity to be free."

Unfortunately for this alluring invitation, Congress had but a few

weeks previously put on record its unsparing condemnation of the Quebec

Act. Inspired by those New Englanders who, for a century, had suffered

from French raids, Congress had expressed its verdict on the privileges

granted to Quebec in these words: "_Nor can we supress our astonishment

that a British Parliament should establish a religion that has drenched

your island_ [England] _in blood_." This declaration was the cardinal

blunder of Congress as far as Canada was concerned. Of the merits of

the quarrel the simple French habitant knew nothing. He did what his

curé told him to do; and the Catholic Church would not risk casting in

its lot with a Congress that declared its religion had drenched England

in blood. English inhabitants of Montreal and Quebec, who had flocked

to Canada from the New England colonies, were far readier to listen to

the invitation of Congress than were the French.

Governor Carleton had fewer than 800 troops, and naturally the French

did not rally as volunteers in the impending war between England and

her English colonies. Should the Congress troops invade Canada? The

question was hanging fire when Ethan Allen, with his two hundred Green

Mountain boys of Vermont, marched across to Lake Champlain in May of

1775, hobnobbed with the guards of Ticonderoga, who drank not wisely

but too well, then rowed by night across the narrows and knocked at the

wicket beside the main gate. The sleepy guards, not yet sober from the

night's carouse, admitted the Vermonters as friends. In rushed the

whole two hundred. In a trice the Canadian garrison of forty-four were

all captured and Allen was thundering on the chamber door of La Place,

the commandant. It was five in the morning. La Place sprang up in his

nightshirt and demanded in whose name he was ordered to surrender.

Ethan Allen answered in words that have gone {299} down to history,

"_In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress_."

Later fell Crown Point. So began the war with Canada in the great

Revolution.

And now, from May to September, Arnold's Green Mountain boys sweep from

Lake Champlain down the Richelieu to the St. Lawrence, as Iberville's

bold bushrovers long ago swept through these woods. However, the

American rovers take no permanent occupation of the different forts on

the falls of the Richelieu River, preferring rather to overrun the

parishes, dispatching secret spies and waiting for the habitants to

rally. And they came once too often, once too far, these bold banditti

of the wilderness, clad in buckskin, musket over shoulder, coonskin

cap! Montreal is so full of spies, so full of friendlies, so full of

Bostonnais in sympathy with the revolutionists, that Allen feels safe

in paddling across the St. Lawrence one September morning to the

Montreal side with only one hundred and fifty men. Montreal has grown

in these ten years to a city of some twelve thousand, but the gates are

fast shut against the American scouts; and while Allen waits in some

barns of the suburbs, presto! out sallies Major Garden with twice as

many men armed to the teeth, who assault the barns at a rush. Five

Americans drop at the first crack of the rifles. The Canadians are

preparing to set fire to the barns. Allen's men will be picked off as

they rush from the smoke. Wisely, he saves his Green Mountain boys by

surrender. Thirty-five capitulate. The rest have escaped through the

woods. Carleton refuses to acknowledge the captives as prisoners of

war. He claps irons on their hands and irons on their feet and places

them on a vessel bound for England to be treated as rebels to the

crown. It is said those of Allen's men who deserted were French

Canadians in disguise--which may explain why Carleton made such severe

example of his captives and at once purged Montreal of the disaffected

by compelling all who would not take arms to leave.

Carleton's position was chancy enough in all conscience. The habitants

were wavering. They refused point-blank to serve as volunteers. They

supplied the invaders with provisions. Spies were everywhere.

Practically no help could come from {300} England till spring, and

scouts brought word that two American armies were now marching in force

on Canada,--one by way of the Richelieu, twelve hundred strong, led by

Richard Montgomery of New York, directed against Montreal; the other by

way of the Kennebec, with fifteen hundred men under Benedict Arnold, to

attack Quebec. Carleton is at Montreal. He rushes his troops, six

hundred and ninety out of eight hundred men, up the Richelieu to hold

the forts at Chambly and St. John's against Montgomery's advance.

Half September and all October Montgomery camps on the plains before

Fort St. John's, his rough soldiers clad for the most part in their

shirt sleeves, trousers, and coon cap, with badges of "Liberty or

Death" worked in the cap bands, or sprigs of green put in their hats,

in lieu of soldier's uniform. Inside the fort, Major Preston, the

English commander, has almost seven hundred men, with ample powder. It

is plain to Montgomery that he can win the fort in only one of two

ways,--shut off provisions and starve the garrison out, or get

possession of heavy artillery to batter down the walls. It is said

that fortune favors the dauntless. So it was with Montgomery, for he

was enabled to besiege the fort in both ways. Carleton had rushed a

Colonel McLean to the relief of St. John's with a force of French

volunteers, but the French deserted en masse. McLean was left without

any soldiers. This cut off St. John's from supply of provisions. At

Chambly Fort was a Major Stopford with eighty men and a supply of heavy

artillery. Montgomery sent a detachment to capture Chambly for the

sake of its artillery. Stopford surrendered to the Americans without a

blow, and the heavy cannon were forthwith trundled along the river to

Montgomery at St. John's. Preston sends frantic appeal to Carleton for

help. He has reduced his garrison to half rations, to quarter rations,

to very nearly no rations at all! Carleton sends back secret express.

He can send no help. He has no more men. Montgomery tactfully lets

the message pass in. After siege of forty-five days, Preston

surrenders with all the honors of war, his six hundred and eighty-eight

men marching {301} out, arms reversed, and going aboard Montgomery's

ships to proceed as prisoners up Lake Champlain.

The way is now open to Montreal. Benedict Arnold, meanwhile, with the

army directed against Quebec, has crossed from the Kennebec to the

Chaudière, paddled across St. Lawrence River, and on the very day that

Montgomery's troops take possession of Montreal, November 13, Arnold's

army has camped on the Plains of Abraham behind Quebec walls, whence he

scatters his foragers, ravaging the countryside far west as Three

Rivers for provisions. The trials of his canoe voyage from Maine to

the St. Lawrence at swift pace have been terrific. More than half his

men have fallen away either from illness or open desertion. Arnold has

fewer than seven hundred men as he waits for Montgomery at Quebec.

[Illustration: GENERAL RICHARD MONTGOMERY]

What of Guy Carleton, the English governor, now? Canada's case seemed

hopeless. The flower of her army had been taken prisoners, and no help

could come before May. Desperate circumstances either make or break a

man, prove or undo him. As reverses closed in on Carleton, like the

wrestlers of old he but took tighter grip of his resolutions.

On November 11, two days before Preston's men surrendered, Carleton,

with two or three military officers disguised as peasants, boarded one

of three armed vessels to go down from Montreal to Quebec. All the

cannon at Montreal had been dismounted and spiked. What powder could

not be carried {302} away was buried or thrown into the river. Amid

funereal silence, shaking hands sadly with the Montreal friends who had

gathered at the wharf to say farewell, the English Governor left

Montreal. That night the wind failed, and the three vessels lay to

with limp sails. At Sorel, at Three Rivers, at every hamlet on both

sides of the St. Lawrence, lay American scouts to capture the English

Governor. All next day the vessels lay wind-bound. Desperate for the

fate of Quebec, Carleton embarked on a river barge propelled by sweeps.

Passing Sorel at night Carleton and his disguised officers could see

the camp fires of the American army. Here oars were laid aside and the

raft steadied down the tide by the rowers paddling with the palms of

their hands. Three Rivers was found in possession of the Americans,

and a story is told of Carleton, foredone from lack of sleep, dozing in

an eating house or tavern with his head sunk forward upon his hands,

when two or three American scouts broke into the room. Not a sign did

the English party in peasant disguise give of alarm or uneasiness,

which might have betrayed the Governor. "Come, come," said one of the

English officers in French, slapping Sir Guy Carleton carelessly on the

back, "we must be going"; and the Governor escaped unsuspected.

November 19, to the inexpressible relief of Quebec Carleton reached the

capital city.

Quebec now had a population of some five thousand. All able-bodied men

who would not fight were expelled from the city. What with the small

garrison, some marines who happened to be in port, and the citizens

themselves, eighteen hundred defenders were mustered. On the walls

were a hundred and fifty heavy cannon, and all the streets leading from

Lower to Upper Town had been barricaded with cannon mounted above. At

each of the city gates were posted battalions. Sentries never left the

walls, and the whole army literally slept in its boots. It will be

remembered that the natural position of Quebec was worth an army in

itself. On all sides there was access only by steepest climb. In

front, where the modern visitor ascends from the wharf to Upper Town by

Mountain Street {303} steep as a stair, barricades had been built. To

the right, where flows St. Charles River past Lower Town, platforms

mounted with cannon guarded approach. To the rear was the wall behind

which camped Arnold; to the left sheer precipice, above which the

defenders had suspended swinging lanterns that lighted up every

movement on the path below along the St. Lawrence.

[Illustration: MAP OF QUEBEC DURING SIEGE OF CONGRESS TROOPS]

Early in December comes Montgomery himself to Quebec, on the very ships

which Carleton had abandoned. Carleton refuses even the letter

demanding surrender. Montgomery is {304} warned that forthwith any

messenger sent to the walls will come at peril of being shot as rebel.

Henceforth what communication Montgomery has with the inhabitants must

be by throwing proclamations inside or bribing old habitant women as

carriers,--for the habitants continue to pass in and out of the city

with provisions; and a deserter presently brings word that Montgomery

has declared he will "_eat his Christmas dinner in Quebec or in Hell_!"

Whereupon Carleton retorts, "He may choose his own place, but he shan't

eat it in Quebec."

Montgomery was now in the same position as Wolfe at the great siege.

His troops daily grew more ragged; many were without shoes, and

smallpox was raging in camp. He could not tempt his foe to come out

and fight; therefore he must assault the foe in its own stronghold. It

will be remembered, Wolfe had feigned attack to the fore, and made the

real attack to the rear. Montgomery reversed the process. He feigned

attack to the rear gates of St. John and St. Louis, and made the real

attack to the fore from the St. Charles and the St. Lawrence. While a

few soldiers were to create noisy hubbub at St. John and St. Louis

gates from the back of the city, Arnold was to march through Lower Town

from the Charles River side, Montgomery along the narrow cliff below

the Citadel, through Lower Town, to that steep Mountain Street which

tourists to-day ascend directly from the wharves of the St. Lawrence.

On the squares of Upper Town the two armies were to unite and fight

Carleton. The plan of attack practically encompassed the city from

every side. Spies had brought rumors to Carleton that the signal for

assault for the American troops was to be the first dark stormy night.

Christmas passed quietly enough without Montgomery carrying out his

threat, and on the night before New Year's all was quiet. Congress

soldiers had dispersed among the taverns outside the walls, and

Carleton felt so secure he had gone comfortably to bed. For a month,

shells from the American guns had been whizzing over Upper Town, with

such small damage that citizens had continued to go about as usual. On

the walls was a constant popping from the sharpshooters of both sides,

and occasionally {305} an English sentry, parading the walls at

imminent risk of being a target, would toss down a cheery "Good morrow,

gentlemen," to a Congress trooper below. Then, quick as a flash, both

men would lift and fire; but the results were small credit to the aim

of either shooter, for the sentry would duck off the wall untouched,

just as the American dashed for hiding behind barricade or house of

Lower Town. Some of the Americans wanted to know what were the

lanterns and lookouts which the English had constructed above the

precipice of Cape Diamond. Some wag of a habitant answered these were

the sign of a wooden horse with hay in front of it, and that the

English general, Carleton, had said he would not surrender the town

till the horse had caught up to the hay. Skulking riflemen of the

Congress troops had taken refuge in the mansion of Bigot's former

magnificence, the Intendant's Palace, and Carleton had ordered the

cannoneers on his walls to knock the house down. So fell the house of

Bigot's infamy.

Towards 2 A.M. of December 31 the wind began to blow a hurricane. The

bright moonlight became obscured by flying clouds, and earth and air

were wrapped in a driving storm of sleet. Instantly the Congress

troops rallied to their headquarters behind the city. Montgomery at

quick march swept down the steep cliff of the river to the shore road,

and in the teeth of a raging wind led his men round under the heights

of Cape Diamond to the harbor front. Heads lowered against the wind,

coonskin caps pulled low over eyes, ash-colored flannel shirts buttoned

tight to necks, gun casings and sacks wrapped loosely round loaded

muskets to keep out the damp, the marchers tramped silently through the

storm. Overhead was the obscured glare where the lanterns hung out in

a blare of snow above Cape Diamond. Here rockets were sent up as a

signal to Arnold on St. Charles River. Then Montgomery's men were

among the houses of Lower Town, noting well that every window had been

barricaded and darkened from cellar to attic. Somewhere along the

narrow path in front of the town Montgomery knew that barricades had

been built with cannon behind, but he trusted to the storm concealing

his approach till his men could capture them at a rush. At Près {306}

de Ville, just where the traveler approaching harbor front may to-day

see a tablet erected in memory of the invasion, was a barricade.

Montgomery halted his men. Scouts returned with word that all was

quiet and in darkness--the English evidently asleep; and uncovering

muskets, the Congress fighters dashed forward at a run. But it was the

silence that precedes the thunderclap. The English had known that the

storm was to signal attack, and guessing that the rockets foretokened

the assailants' approach, they had put out all lights behind the

barricade. Until Montgomery's men were within a few feet of the log,

there was utter quiet; then a voice shrieked out, "Fire!--fire!"

Instantly a flash of flame met the runners like a wall. Groans and

screams split through the muffling storm. Montgomery and a dozen

others fell dead. The rest had broken away in retreat,--a rabble

without a commander,--carrying the wounded. Behind the barricade was

almost as great confusion among the English, for Quebec's defenders

were made up of boys of fifteen and old men of seventy, and the first

crash of battle had been followed by a panic, when half the guards

would have thrown down their arms if one John Coffin, an expelled

royalist from Boston, had not shouted out that he would throw the first

man who attempted to desert into the river.

Meantime, how had it gone with Arnold?

[Illustration: SIR GUY CARLETON]

An English officer was passing near St. Louis Gate when, sometime after

two o'clock, he noticed rockets go up from the river beyond Cape

Diamond. He at once sounded the alarm. Bugles called to arms, drums

rolled, and every bell in the city was set ringing. In less than ten

minutes every man of Quebec's eighteen hundred was in place. American

soldiers marching through St. Roch, Lower Town, have described how the

tolling of the bells rolling through the storm smote cold on their

hearts, for they knew their designs had been discovered, and they could

not turn back, for a juncture must be effected with Montgomery. A

moment later the sham assaults were peppering the rear gates of Quebec,

but Guy Carleton was too crafty a campaigner to be tricked by any sham.

He rightly guessed that the real attack {307} would be made on one of

the two weaker spots leading up from Lower Town. "Now is the time to

show what stuff you are made of," he called to the soldiers, as he

ordered more detachments to the place whence came crash of heaviest

firing. This was at Sault-au-Matelot Street, a narrow, steep

thoroughfare, barely twenty feet from side to side. Up this little

tunnel of a street Arnold had rushed his men, surmounting one barricade

where they exchanged their own wet muskets for the dry guns of the

English deserters, dashing into houses to get possession of windows as

vantage points, over, some accounts say, yet another obstruction, till

his whole army was cooped up in a canyon of a street directly below the

hill front on which had been erected a platform with heavy guns. It

was a gallant rush, but it was futile, for now Carleton outgeneraled

Arnold. Guessing from the distance of the shots that the attack to the

rear was sheer sham, the English general rushed his fighters downhill

by another gate to catch Arnold on the rear. Quebec houses are built

close and cramped. While these troops were stealing in behind Arnold

to close on him like a trap, it was easy trick for another English

battalion to scramble over house roofs, over back walls, and up the

very stairs of houses where Arnold's troops were guarding the windows.

Then Arnold was carried past his men badly wounded. "We are sold,"

muttered the Congress troops, "caught like rats in a trap." Still they

pressed toward in hand to hand scuffle, with shots at such close range

the Boston soldiers were {308} shouting, "Quebec men, do not fire on

your true friends!" with absurd pitching of each other by the scruff of

the neck from the windows. Daylight only served to make plainer the

desperate plight of the entrapped raiders. At ten o'clock five hundred

Congress soldiers surrendered. It must not for one moment be forgotten

that each side was fighting gallantly for what it believed to be right,

and each bore the other the respect due a good fighter and upright foe.

In fact, with the exception of two or three episodes mutually

regretted, it may be said there were fewer bitter thoughts that New

Year's morning than have arisen since from this war. The captured

Americans had barely been sent to quarters in convents and hospitals

before a Quebec merchant sent them a gift of several hogsheads of

porter. When the bodies of Montgomery and his fellow-comrades in death

were found under the snowdrifts, they were reverently removed, and

interred with the honors of war just inside St. Louis Gate.

Though the invaders were defeated, Quebec continued to be invested till

spring, the thud of exploding bombs doing little harm except in the

case of one family, during spring, when a shell fell through the roof

to a dining-room table, killing a son where he sat at dinner. As the

ice cleared from the river in spring, both sides were on the watch for

first aid. Would Congress send up more soldiers on transports; or

would English frigates be rushed to the aid of Quebec? The Americans

were now having trouble collecting food from the habitants, for the

French doubted the invaders' success, and Congress paper money would be

worthless to the holders. One beautiful clear May moonlight night a

vessel was espied between nine and ten at night coming up the river

full sail before the wind. Was she friend or foe? Carleton and his

officers gazed anxiously from the citadel. Guns were fired as signal.

No answer came from the ship. Again she was hailed, and again; yet she

failed to hang out English colors. Carleton then signaled he would

sink her, and set the rampart cannon sweeping her bows. In a second

she was ablaze, a fire ship sent by the enemy loaded with shells and

grenades and bombs that shot off like a fusillade of rockets. At the

same time a boat was seen rowing from the {309} far side of her with

terrific speed. Carleton's precaution had prevented the destruction of

the harbor fleet. Three days later, at six in the morning, the firing

of great guns announced the coming of an English frigate. At once

every man, woman, and child of Quebec poured down to the harbor front,

half-dressed, mad with joy. By midday, Guy Carleton had led eight

hundred soldiers out to the Plains of Abraham to give battle against

the Americans; but General Thomas of the Congress army did not wait.

Such swift flight was taken that artillery, stores, tents, uneaten

dinners cooked and on the table, were abandoned to Carleton's men.

General Thomas himself died of smallpox at Sorel. At Montreal all was

confusion. The city had been but marking time, pending the swing of

victory at Quebec. In the spring of 1776 Congress had sent three

commissioners to Montreal to win Canada for the new republic. One was

the famous Benjamin Franklin, another a prominent Catholic; but the

French Canadian clergy refused to forget the attack of Congress on the

Quebec Act, and remained loyal to England.

[Illustration: BENEDICT ARNOLD]

For almost a year, in desultory fashion, the campaign against Canada

dragged on, Carleton reoccupying and fortifying Montreal, Three Rivers,

St. John's, and Chamby, then pushing up Champlain Lake in October of

1776, with three large vessels and ninety small ones. Between Valcour

Island and the mainland he caught Benedict Arnold with the Congress

boats on October 11, and succeeded in battering them to pieces before

{310} Arnold could extricate them. As the boats sank, the American

crews escaped ashore; but the English went no farther south than Crown

Point this year. If Carleton had failed at Quebec, there can be no

doubt Canada would have been permanently lost to England; for the

following year France openly espoused the cause of Congress, and

proclamations were secretly smuggled all through Canada to be posted on

church doors, calling on Canadians to remain loyal to France.

Curiously enough, it was Washington, the leader of the Americans, who

checkmated this move. With a wisdom almost prophetic, he foresaw that

if France helped the United States, and then demanded Canada as her

reward, the old border warfare would be renewed with tenfold more

terror. No longer would it be bushrover pitted against frontiersmen.

It would be France against Congress, and Washington refused to give the

aid of Congress to the scheme of France embroiling America in European

wars. The story of how Clark, the American, won the Mississippi forts

for Congress is not part of Canada's history, nor are the terrible

border raids of Butler and Brant, the Mohawk, who sided with the

English, and left the Wyoming valley south of the Iroquois Confederacy

a blackened wilderness, and the homes of a thousand settlers smoking

ruins. It is this last raid which gave the poet Campbell his theme in

"Gertrude of Wyoming." By the Treaty of Versailles, in 1783, England

acknowledged the independence of the United States, and Canada's area

was shorn of her fairest territory by one fell swath. Instead of the

Ohio being the southern boundary, the middle line of the Great Lakes

divided Canada from her southern neighbor. The River Ste. Croix was to

separate Maine from New Brunswick. The sole explanation of this loss

to Canada was that the American commissioners knew their business and

the value of the ceded territory, and the English commissioners did

not. It is one of the many conspicuous examples of what loyalty has

cost Canada. England is to give up the western posts to the United

States, from Miami to Detroit and Michilimackinac and Grand Portage.

In return the United States federal government is to recommend to the

States {311} Governments that all property confiscated from Royalists

during the war be restored.

[Illustration: GENERAL HALDIMAND]

General Haldimand, a Swiss who has served in the Seven Years' War,

succeeds Carleton as governor in 1778. The times are troublous. There

is still a party in favor of Congress. The great unrest, which ends in

the French Revolution, disturbs habitants' life. Then that provision

of the Quebec Act, by which legislative councilors were to be nominated

by the crown, works badly. Councilors, judges, crown attorneys, even

bailiffs are appointed by the colonial office of London, and find it

more to their interests to stay currying favor in London than to attend

to their duties in Canada. The country is cursed by the evil of absent

officeholders, who draw salaries and appoint incompetent deputies to do

the work. As for the social unrest that fills the air, Haldimand claps

the malcontents in jail till the storm blows over; but the tricks of

speculators, who have flocked to Canada, give trouble of another sort.

Naturally the ring of English speculators, rather than the impoverished

French, became ascendant in foreign trade, and during the American war

the ring got such complete control of the wheat supply that bread

jumped to famine price. Just as he had dealt with the malcontents

soldier fashion, so Haldimand now had a law passed forbidding tricks

with the price of wheat. Like Carleton, {312} Haldimand too came down

hard on the land-jobbers, who tried to jockey poor French peasants out

of their farms for bailiff's fees. It may be guessed that Haldimand

was not a popular governor with the English clique. Nevertheless, he

kept sumptuous bachelor quarters at his mansion near Montmorency Falls,

was a prime favorite with the poor and with the soldiers, and sometimes

deigned to take lessons in pickle making and home keeping from the

grand dames of Quebec. In 1786 Carleton comes back as Lord Dorchester.

Congress had promised to protect the property of those Royalists who

had fought on the losing side in the American Revolution, but for

reasons beyond the control of Congress, that promise could not be

carried out. It was not Congress but the local governments of each

individual state that controlled property rights. In vain Congress

recommended the States Governments to restore the property confiscated

from the Royalists. The States Governments were in a condition of

chaos, packed by jobbers and land-grabbers and the riffraff that always

infest the beginnings of a nation. Instead of protecting the

Royalists, the States Governments passed laws confiscating more

property and depriving those who had fought for England of even holding

office. It was easy for the tricksters who had got possession of the

loyalists' lands to create a social ostracism that endangered the very

lives of the beaten Royalists, and there set towards Canada the great

emigration of the United Empire Loyalists. To Nova Scotia, to New

Brunswick, to Prince Edward Island, to Ontario, they came from Virginia

and Pennsylvania and New York and Massachusetts and Vermont, in

thousands upon thousands. The story of their sufferings and far

wanderings has never been told and probably never will, for there is

little official record of it; but it can be likened only to the

expulsion of the Acadians multiplied a hundredfold. To the Maritime

Provinces alone came more than thirty thousand people. To the eastern

townships of Quebec, to the regions of Kingston and Niagara and Toronto

in Ontario came some twenty thousand more. It needs no {313} trick of

fancy to call up the scene, and one marvels that neither poet nor

novelist has yet made use of it. Here were fine old Royalist officers

of New York reduced from opulence to penury, from wealth to such

absolute destitution they had neither clothing nor food, nor money to

pay ship's passage away, now crowded with their families, and such

wrecks of household goods as had escaped raid and fire, on some cheap

government transport or fishing schooner bound from New York Harbor to

Halifax or Fundy Bay. Of the thirteen thousand people bound for

Halifax there can scarcely be a family that has not lost brothers or

sons in the war. Family plate, old laces, heirlooms, even the father's

sword in some cases, have long ago been pawned for food. If one finds,

as one does find all through Nova Scotia, fine old mahogany and walnut

furniture brought across by the Loyalists, it is only because walnut

and mahogany were not valued at the time of the Revolution as they are

to-day. And instead of welcome at Halifax, the refugees met with

absolute consternation! What is a town of five thousand people to do

with so many hungry visitants? They are quartered about in churches,

in barracks, in halls knocked up, till they can be sent to farms. And

these are not common immigrants coming fresh from toil in the fields of

Europe; they are gently nurtured men and women, representing the

aristocracy and wealth and conservatism of New York. This explains why

one finds among the prominent families of Nova Scotia the same names as

among the most prominent families of Massachusetts and New York. To

the officers and heads of families the English government granted from

two thousand to five thousand acres each, and to sons and daughters of

Loyalists two hundred acres each, besides 3,000,000 pounds in cash, as

necessity for it arose.

On the north side of Fundy Bay hardships were even greater, for the

Loyalists landed from their ships on the homeless shores of the

wildwood wilderness. Rude log cabins of thatch roof and plaster walls

were knocked up, and there began round the log cabin that tiny clearing

which was to expand into the farm. The coming of the Loyalists really

peopled both New Brunswick {314} and Prince Edward Island: the former

becoming a separate province in 1784, named after the ruling house of

England; the latter named after the Duke of Kent, who was in command of

the garrison at Charlottetown.

More strenuous still was the migration of the United Empire Loyalists

from the south. Rich old planters of Virginia and Maryland, who had

had their colored servants by the score, now came with their families

in rude tented wagons, fine chippendales jumbled with heavy mahogany

furnishings, up the old Cumberland army road to the Ohio, and across

from the Ohio to the southern townships of Quebec, to the backwoods of

Niagara and Kingston and Toronto and modern Hamilton, and west as far

as what is now known as London. I have heard descendants of these old

southern Loyalists tell how hopelessly helpless were these planters'

families, used to hundreds of negro servants and now bereft of help in

a backwoods wilderness. It took but a year or so to wear out the fine

laces and pompous ruffles of their aristocratic clothing, and men and

women alike were reduced to the backwoods costume of coon cap, homespun

garments, and Indian moccasins. Often one could witness such anomalies

in their log cabins as gilt mirrors and spindly glass cabinets ranged

in the same apartment as stove and cooking utensils. If the health of

the father failed or the war had left him crippled, there was nothing

for it but for the mother to take the helm; and many a Canadian can

trace lineage back to a United Empire Loyalist woman who planted the

first crop by hand with a hoe and reaped the first crop by hand with a

sickle. Sometimes the jovial habits of the planter life came with the

Loyalists to Canada, and winter witnessed a furbishing up of old

flounces and laces to celebrate all-night dance in log houses where

partitions were carpets and tapestries hung up as walls. Sometimes,

too,--at least I have heard descendants of the eastern township people

tell the story,--the jovial habits kept the father tippling and card

playing at the village inn while the lonely mother kept watch and ward

in the cabin of the snow-padded forests. Of necessity the Loyalists

banded together to {315} help one another. There were "sugarings off"

in the maple woods every spring for the year's supply of homemade

sugar,--glorious nights and days in the spring forests with the sap

trickling from the trees to the scooped-out troughs; with the grown-ups

working over the huge kettle where the molasses was being boiled to

sugar; with the young of heart, big and little, gathering round the

huge bonfires at night in the woods for the sport of a taffy pull, with

molasses dripping on sticks and huge wooden spoons taken from the pot.

There were threshings when the neighbors gathered together to help one

another beat out their grain from the straw with a flail. There were

"harvest homes" and "quilting bees" and "loggings" and "barn raisings."

Clothes were homemade. Sugar was homemade. Soap was homemade. And

for years and years the only tea known was made from steeping dry

leaves gathered in the woods; the only coffee made from burnt peas

ground up. Such were the United Empire Loyalists, whose lives some

unheralded poet will yet sing,--not an unfit stock for a nation's

empire builders.

At the same time that the Loyalists came to Canada, came Joseph

Brant,--Thayendanegea, the Mohawk,--with the remnant of his tribe, who

had fought for the English. To them the government granted some

700,000 acres in Ontario.

[Illustration: JOSEPH BRANT]

{316} It is not surprising that the United Empire Loyalists objected to

living under the French laws of the Quebec Act. They had fought for

England against Congress, but they wanted representative government,

and the Constitutional Act was passed in 1791 dividing the country into

Upper and Lower Canada, each to have its own parliament consisting of a

governor, a legislative council appointed by the crown, and an assembly

elected by the people. There was to be no religious test. Naturally

old French laws would prevail in Quebec, English laws in Ontario or

Upper Canada. By this act, too, land known as the Clergy Reserves was

set apart for the Protestant Church. The first parliament in Quebec

met in the bishop's palace in December of 1792; the first parliament of

Ontario in Newark or Niagara in September of the same year, the most of

the newly elected members coming by canoe and dugout, and, as the

Indian summer of that autumn proved hot, holding many of the sessions

in shirt sleeves out under the trees, Lieutenant Governor Simcoe

reporting that the electors seem to have favored "men of the lower

order, who kept but one table and ate with their servants." The

earliest sessions of the Ontario House were marked by acts to remove

the capital from the boundary across to Toronto, and to legalize

marriages by Protestant clergymen other than of the English church. It

is amusing to read how Governor Simcoe regarded the marriage bill as an

opening of the flood gates to {317} republicanism; but for all their

shirt sleeves, the legislators enjoyed themselves and danced till

morning in Navy Hall, the Governor's residence, "Mad Tom Talbot," the

Governor's aid-de-camp, losing his heart to the fine eyes of Brant's

Indian niece, daughter of Sir William Johnson of the old Lake George

battle.

[Illustration: LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR SIMCOE]

Down at Quebec things were managed with more pomp, and no social event

was complete without the presence of the Duke of Kent, military

commandant, now living in Haldimand's old house at Montmorency. Nova

Scotia had held parliaments since 1758, when Halifax elected her first

members.

Besides the United Empire Loyalists, other settlers were coming to

Canada. The Earl of Selkirk, a patriotic young Scotch nobleman, had

arranged for the removal of evicted Highlanders to Prince Edward Island

in 1803 and to Baldoon on Lake St. Clair. Then "Mad Tom Talbot,"

Governor Simcoe's aid, descendant of the Talbots of Castle Malahide and

boon comrade of the young soldier who became the Duke of Wellington,

becomes so enamored of wilderness life that he gives up his career in

Europe, gains grant of lands between London and Port Dover, and lays

foundations of settlements in western Ontario, spite of the fact he

remains a bachelor. The man who had danced at royalty's balls and

drunk deep of pleasure at the beck of princes now lived in a log house

of three rooms, laughed at difficulties, "baked his own bread, milked

his own cows, made his own butter, washed his own clothes, ironed his

own linen," and taught colonists who bought his lands "how to do

without the rotten refuse of Manchester warehouses,"--the term he

applied to the broadcloth of the newcomer.

Under the French régime, Canada had consisted of a string of fur posts

isolated in a wilderness. It will be noticed that it now consisted of

five distinct provinces of nation builders.

{318}