Campbell of Inverawe, his arm shattered by a bullet, was carried to Fort
Edward, where, after amputation, he died and was buried. (_Abercromby to
Pitt, 19 August, 1758._) The stone that marks his grave may still be
seen, with this inscription: "_Here lyes the Body of Duncan Campbell of
Inverawe, Esquire., Major to the old Highland Regiment, aged 55 Years,
who died the 17th July, 1758, of the Wounds he received in the Attack
of the Retrenchment of Ticonderoga or Carrillon, on the 8th July,
1758._"
His son, Lieutenant Alexander Campbell, was severely wounded at the same
time, but reached Scotland alive, and died in Glasgow.
* * * * *
Mr. Campbell, the present Inverawe, in the letter mentioned above, says
that forty-five years ago he knew an old man whose grandfather was
foster-brother to the slain major of the forty-second, and who told him
the following story while carrying a salmon for him to an inn near
Inverawe. The old man's grandfather was sleeping with his son, then a
lad, in the same room, but in another bed. This son, father of the
narrator, "was awakened," to borrow the words of Mr. Campbell, "by some
unaccustomed sound, and behold there was a bright light in the room, and
he saw a figure, in full Highland regimentals, cross over the room and
stoop down over his father's bed and give him a kiss. He was too
frightened to speak, but put his head under his coverlet and went to
sleep. Once more he was roused in like manner, and saw the same sight.
In the morning he spoke to his father about it, who told him that it was
Macdonnochie [_the Gaelic patronymic of the laird of Inverawe_] whom he
had seen, and who came to tell him that he had been killed in a great
battle in America. Sure enough, said my informant, it was on the very
day that the battle of Ticonderoga was fought and the laird was killed."
It is also said that two ladies of the family of Inverawe saw a battle
in the clouds, in which the shadowy forms of Highland warriors were
plainly to be descried; and that when the fatal news came from America,
it was found that the time of the vision answered exactly to that of the
battle in which the head of the family fell.
NIAGARA.
[Illustration: HENNEPIN'S PICTURE OF NIAGARA.]
SIEGE OF FORT NIAGARA.
The River Niagara was known to the Jesuits as early as 1640. The Falls
are indicated on Champlain's map of 1632, and in 1648 the Jesuit
Rugueneau speaks of them as a "cataract of frightful height."
In 1678, the Falls were visited by the friar Louis Hennepin, who gives
an exaggerated description of them, and illustrates it by a curious
picture. The name Niagara is of Iroquois origin, and in the Mohawk
dialect is pronounced Nyagarah.
In the year of Hennepin's visit, the followers of Cavelier de la Salle
began a fortified storehouse where Lewiston now stands, and on Cayuga
Creek, a few miles above the Falls, La Salle built the "Griffin," the
first vessel that ever sailed on the Upper Lakes. At the same time he
began a fort at the mouth of the river. La Salle's fort fell to ruin,
and another was built in its place a few years after. This, too, was
abandoned to be again rebuilt, and the post remained in French hands
more than half a century. It was of the greatest importance, since it
commanded the chief route from Canada to the interior of the continent.
At length, in 1759, the year of Wolfe's famous victory at Quebec,
General Prideaux was sent to reduce it.
Prideaux safely reached Niagara, and laid siege to it. Fort Niagara was
a strong work, lately rebuilt in regular form by an excellent officer,
Captain Pouchot, of the battalion of Bearn, who commanded it. It stood
where the present fort stands, in the angle formed by the junction of
the River Niagara with Lake Ontario, and was held by about six hundred
men, well supplied with provisions and munitions of war. Higher up the
river, a mile and a half above the cataract, there was another fort,
called Little Niagara, built of wood, and commanded by the half-breed
officer, Joncaire-Chabert, who with his brother, Joncaire-Clauzonne, and
a numerous clan of Indian relatives, had long thwarted the efforts of
Sir William Johnson to engage the Five Nations in the English cause. But
recent English successes had had their effect. Joncaire's influence was
waning, and Johnson was now in Prideaux's camp with nine hundred Five
Nation warriors pledged to fight the French. Joncaire, finding his fort
untenable, burned it, and came with his garrison and his Indian friends
to reinforce Niagara.
Pouchot had another resource, on which he confidently relied. In
obedience to an order from Vaudreuil, the French population of the
Illinois, Detroit, and other distant posts, joined with troops of
Western Indians, had come down the Lakes to restore French ascendency on
the Ohio. These mixed bands of white men and red, bushrangers and
savages, were now gathered, partly at Le Boeuf and Venango, but chiefly
at Presquisle, under command of Aubry, Ligneris, Marin, and other
partisan chiefs, the best in Canada. No sooner did Pouchot learn that
the English were coming to attack him than he sent a messenger to summon
them all to his aid.
The siege was begun in form, though the English engineers were so
incompetent that the trenches, as first laid out, were scoured by the
fire of the place, and had to be made anew. At last the batteries opened
fire. A shell from a cochorn burst prematurely, just as it left the
mouth of the piece, and a fragment striking Prideaux on the head, killed
him instantly. Johnson took command in his place, and made up in energy
what he lacked in skill. In two or three weeks the fort was in
extremity. The rampart was breached, more than a hundred of the garrison
were killed or disabled, and the rest were exhausted with want of sleep.
Pouchot watched anxiously for the promised succors; and on the morning
of the twenty-fourth of July a distant firing told him that they were at
hand.
Aubry and Ligneris, with their motley following, had left Presquisle a
few days before, to the number, according to Vaudreuil, of eleven
hundred French and two hundred Indians. Among them was a body of colony
troops; but the Frenchmen of the party were chiefly traders and
bushrangers from the West, connecting links between civilization and
savagery; some of them indeed were mere white Indians, imbued with the
ideas and morals of the wigwam, wearing hunting-shirts of smoked
deer-skin embroidered with quills of the Canada porcupine, painting
their faces black and red, tying eagle feathers in their long hair, or
plastering it on their temples with a compound of vermilion and glue.
They were excellent woodsmen, skilful hunters, and perhaps the best
bushfighters in all Canada.
When Pouchot heard the firing, he went with a wounded artillery officer
to the bastion next the river; and as the forest had been cut away for a
great distance, they could see more than a mile and a half along the
shore. There, by glimpses among trees and bushes, they descried bodies
of men, now advancing, and now retreating; Indians in rapid movement,
and the smoke of guns, the sound of which reached their ears in heavy
volleys, or a sharp and angry rattle. Meanwhile the English cannon had
ceased their fire, and the silent trenches seemed deserted, as if their
occupants were gone to meet the advancing foe. There was a call in the
fort for volunteers to sally and destroy the works; but no sooner did
they show themselves along the covered way than the seemingly abandoned
trenches were thronged with men and bayonets, and the attempt was given
up. The distant firing lasted half an hour, then ceased, and Pouchot
remained in suspense; till, at two in the afternoon, a friendly
Onondaga, who had passed unnoticed through the English lines, came to
him with the announcement that the French and their allies had been
routed and cut to pieces. Pouchot would not believe him.
Nevertheless his tale was true. Johnson, besides his Indians, had with
him about twenty-three hundred men, whom he was forced to divide into
three separate bodies,--one to guard the bateaux, one to guard the
trenches, and one to fight Aubry and his band. This last body consisted
of the provincial light infantry and the pickets, two companies of
grenadiers, and a hundred and fifty men of the forty-sixth regiment, all
under command of Colonel Massey. They took post behind an abatis at a
place called La Belle Famille, and the Five Nation warriors placed
themselves on their flanks. These savages had shown signs of
disaffection; and when the enemy approached, they opened a parley with
the French Indians, which, however, soon ended, and both sides raised
the war-whoop. The fight was brisk for a while; but at last Aubry's men
broke away in a panic. The French officers seem to have made desperate
efforts to retrieve the day, for nearly all of them were killed or
captured; while their followers, after heavy loss, fled to their canoes
and boats above the cataract, hastened back to Lake Erie, burned
Presquisle, Le Boeuf, and Venango, and, joined by the garrisons of those
forts, retreated to Detroit, leaving the whole region of the upper Ohio
in undisputed possession of the English.
At four o'clock on the day of the battle, after a furious cannonade on
both sides, a trumpet sounded from the trenches, and an officer
approached the fort with a summons to surrender. He brought also a paper
containing the names of the captive French officers, though some of them
were spelled in a way that defied recognition. Pouchot, feigning
incredulity, sent an officer of his own to the English camp, who soon
saw unanswerable proof of the disaster; for here, under a shelter of
leaves and boughs near the tent of Johnson, sat Ligneris, severely
wounded, with Aubry, Villiers, Montigny, Marin, and their companions in
misfortune,--in all, sixteen officers, four cadets, and a surgeon.
Pouchot had now no choice but surrender. By the terms of the
capitulation, the garrison were to be sent prisoners to New York, though
honors of war were granted them in acknowledgment of their courageous
conduct. There was a special stipulation that they should be protected
from the Indians, of whom they stood in the greatest terror, lest the
massacre of Fort William Henry should be avenged upon them. Johnson
restrained his dangerous allies, and, though the fort was pillaged, no
blood was shed.
The capture of Niagara was an important stroke. Thenceforth Detroit,
Michillimackinac, the Illinois, and all the other French interior posts
were severed from Canada and left in helpless isolation. The conquest of
the whole interior became only a question of time.
MASSACRE OF THE DEVIL'S HOLE.
After the conquest of Canada, there was a general uprising of the Indian
tribes, led by the famous Pontiac, against the British forts and
settlements. In the war that followed, a remarkable incident took place
a little way below Niagara Falls.
The carrying-place of Niagara formed an essential link in the chain of
communication between the province of New York and the interior country.
Men and military stores were conveyed in boats up the river, as far as
the present site of Lewiston. Thence a portage road, several miles in
length, passed along the banks of the stream, and terminated at Fort
Schlosser, above the cataract. This road traversed a region whose
sublime features have gained for it a world-wide renown. The River
Niagara, a short distance below the cataract, assumes an aspect scarcely
less remarkable than that stupendous scene itself. Its channel is formed
by a vast ravine, whose sides, now bare and weather-stained, now shaggy
with forest-trees, rise in cliffs of appalling height and steepness.
Along this chasm pour all the waters of the lakes, heaving their furious
surges with the power of an ocean and the rage of a mountain torrent.
About three miles below the cataract, the precipices which form the
eastern wall of the ravine are broken by an abyss of awful depth and
blackness, bearing at the present day the name of the Devil's Hole. In
its shallowest part, the precipice sinks sheer down to the depth of
eighty feet, where it meets a chaotic mass of rocks, descending with an
abrupt declivity to unseen depths below. Within the cold and damp
recesses of the gulf, a host of forest-trees have rooted themselves;
and, standing on the perilous brink, one may look down upon the mingled
foliage of ash, poplar, and maple, while, above them all, the spruce and
fir shoot their sharp and rigid spires upward into sunlight. The roar of
the convulsed river swells heavily on the ear, and, far below, its
headlong waters may be discerned careering in foam past the openings of
the matted foliage.
On the thirteenth of September, 1763, a numerous train of wagons and
pack horses proceeded from the lower landing to Fort Schlosser, and on
the following morning set out on their return, guarded by an escort of
twenty-four soldiers. They pursued their slow progress until they
reached a point where the road passed along the brink of the Devil's
Hole. The gulf yawned on their left, while on their right the road was
skirted by low and densely wooded hills. Suddenly they were greeted by
the blaze and clatter of a hundred rifles. Then followed the startled
cries of men, and the bounding of maddened horses. At the next instant,
a host of Indians broke screeching from the woods, and rifle-butt and
tomahawk finished the bloody work. All was over in a moment. Horses
leaped the precipice; men were driven shrieking into the abyss; teams
and wagons went over, crashing to atoms among the rocks below. Tradition
relates that the drummer boy of the detachment was caught, in his fall,
among the branches of a tree, where he hung suspended by his drum-strap.
Being but slightly injured, he disengaged himself, and, hiding in the
recesses of the gulf, finally escaped. One of the teamsters also, who
was wounded at the first fire, contrived to crawl into the woods, where
he lay concealed till the Indians had left the place. Besides these two,
the only survivor was Stedman, the conductor of the convoy, who, being
well mounted, and seeing the whole party forced helplessly towards the
precipice, wheeled his horse, and resolutely spurred through the crowd
of Indians. One of them, it is said, seized his bridle; but he freed
himself by a dexterous use of his knife, and plunged into the woods,
untouched by the bullets which whistled about his head. Flying at full
speed through the forest, he reached Fort Schlosser in safety.
The distant sound of the Indian rifles had been heard by a party of
soldiers, who occupied a small fortified camp near the lower landing.
Forming in haste, they advanced eagerly to the rescue. In anticipation
of this movement, the Indians, who were nearly five hundred in number,
had separated into two parties, one of which had stationed itself at the
Devil's Hole, to waylay the convoy, while the other formed an ambuscade
upon the road a mile nearer the landing-place. The soldiers, marching
precipitately, and huddled in a close body, were suddenly assailed by a
volley of rifles, which stretched half their number dead upon the road.
Then, rushing from the forest, the Indians cut down the survivors with
merciless ferocity. A small remnant only escaped the massacre, and fled
to Fort Niagara with the tidings. Major Wilkins, who commanded at this
post, lost no time in marching to the spot, with nearly the whole
strength of his garrison. Not an Indian was to be found. At the two
places of ambuscade, about seventy dead bodies were counted, naked,
scalpless, and so horribly mangled that many of them could not be
recognized. All the wagons had been broken to pieces, and such of the
horses as were not driven over the precipice had been carried off,
laden, doubtless, with the plunder. The ambuscade of the Devil's Hole
has gained a traditionary immortality, adding fearful interest to a
scene whose native horrors need no aid from the imagination.
MONTREAL.
THE BIRTH OF MONTREAL.
We come now to an enterprise as singular in its character as it proved
important in its results.
At La Fleche, in Anjou, dwelt one Jerome le Royer de la Dauversiere,
receiver of taxes. His portrait shows us a round, _bourgeois_ face,
somewhat heavy perhaps, decorated with a slight mustache, and redeemed
by bright and earnest eyes. On his head he wears a black skull-cap; and
over his ample shoulders spreads a stiff white collar, of wide expanse
and studious plainness. Though he belonged to the _noblesse_, his look
is that of a grave burgher, of good renown and sage deportment.
Dauversiere was, however, an enthusiastic devotee, of mystical
tendencies, who whipped himself with a scourge of small chains till his
shoulders were one wound, wore a belt with more than twelve hundred
sharp points, and invented for himself other torments, which filled his
confessor with admiration. One day, while at his devotions, he heard an
inward voice commanding him to become the founder of a new Order of
hospital nuns; and he was further ordered to establish, on the island
called Montreal, in Canada, a hospital, or Hotel-Dieu, to be conducted
by these nuns. But Montreal was a wilderness, and the hospital would
have no patients. Therefore, in order to supply them, the island must
first be colonized. Dauversiere was greatly perplexed. On the one hand,
the voice of Heaven must be obeyed; on the other, he had a wife, six
children, and a very moderate fortune.
Again: there was at Paris a young priest, about twenty-eight years of
age,--Jean Jacques Olier, afterwards widely known as founder of the
Seminary of St. Sulpice. Judged by his engraved portrait, his
countenance, though marked both with energy and intellect, was anything
but prepossessing. Every lineament proclaims the priest. Yet the Abbe
Olier has high titles to esteem. He signalized his piety, it is true, by
the most disgusting exploits of self-mortification; but, at the same
time, he was strenuous in his efforts to reform the people and the
clergy. So zealous was he for good morals, that he drew upon himself the
imputation of a leaning to the heresy of the Jansenists,--a suspicion
strengthened by his opposition to certain priests, who, to secure the
faithful in their allegiance, justified them in lives of licentiousness.
Yet Olier's catholicity was past attaintment, and in his horror of
Jansenists he yielded to the Jesuits alone.
He was praying in the ancient church of St. Germain des Pres, when, like
Dauversiere, he thought he heard a voice from Heaven, saying that he was
destined to be a light to the Gentiles. It is recorded as a mystic
coincidence attending this miracle, that the choir was at that very time
chanting the words, _Lumen ad revelationem Gentium_; and it seems to
have occurred neither to Olier nor to his biographer, that, falling on
the ear of the rapt worshipper, they might have unconsciously suggested
the supposed revelation. But there was a further miracle. An inward
voice told Olier that he was to form a society of priests, and establish
them on the island called Montreal, in Canada, for the propagation of
the True Faith; and writers old and recent assert, that, while both he
and Dauversiere were totally ignorant of Canadian geography, they
suddenly found themselves in possession, they knew not how, of the most
exact details concerning Montreal, its size, shape, situation, soil,
climate, and productions.
The annual volumes of the Jesuit _Relations_, issuing from the renowned
press of Cramoisy, were at this time spread broadcast throughout France;
and, in the circles of _haute devotion_, Canada and its missions were
everywhere the themes of enthusiastic discussion; while Champlain, in
his published works, had long before pointed out Montreal as the proper
site for a settlement. But we are entering a region of miracle, and it
is superfluous to look far for explanations. The illusion, in these
cases, is a part of the history.
Dauversiere pondered the revelation he had received; and the more he
pondered, the more was he convinced that it came from God. He therefore
set out for Paris, to find some means of accomplishing the task assigned
him. Here, as he prayed before an image of the Virgin in the church of
Notre-Dame, he fell into an ecstasy, and beheld a vision. "I should be
false to the integrity of history," writes his biographer, "if I did not
relate it here." And he adds, that the reality of this celestial favor
is past doubting, inasmuch as Dauversiere himself told it to his
daughters. Christ, the Virgin, and St. Joseph appeared before him. He
saw them distinctly. Then he heard Christ ask three times of his Virgin
Mother, _Where can I find a faithful servant?_ On which, the Virgin,
taking him (Dauversiere) by the hand, replied, _See, Lord, here is that
faithful servant!_--and Christ, with a benignant smile, received him
into his service, promising to bestow on him wisdom and strength to do
his work. From Paris he went to the neighboring chateau of Meudon, which
overlooks the valley of the Seine, not far from St. Cloud. Entering the
gallery of the old castle, he saw a priest approaching him. It was
Olier. Now we are told that neither of these men had ever seen or heard
of the other; and yet, says the pious historian, "impelled by a kind of
inspiration, they knew each other at once, even to the depths of their
hearts; saluted each other by name, as we read of St. Paul, the Hermit,
and St. Anthony, and of St. Dominic and St. Francis; and ran to embrace
each other, like two friends who had met after a long separation."
"Monsieur," exclaimed Olier, "I know your design, and I go to commend it
to God at the holy altar."
And he went at once to say mass in the chapel. Dauversiere received the
communion at his hands; and then they walked for three hours in the
park, discussing their plans. They were of one mind, in respect both to
objects and means; and when they parted, Olier gave Dauversiere a
hundred louis, saying, "This is to begin the work of God."
They proposed to found at Montreal three religious communities,--_three_
being the mystic number,--one of secular priests to direct the colonists
and convert the Indians, one of nuns to nurse the sick, and one of nuns
to teach the Faith to the children, white and red. To borrow their own
phrases, they would plant the banner of Christ in an abode of desolation
and a haunt of demons; and to this end a band of priests and women were
to invade the wilderness, and take post between the fangs of the
Iroquois. But first they must make a colony, and to do so must raise
money. Olier had pious and wealthy penitents; Dauversiere had a friend,
the Baron de Fancamp, devout as himself and far richer. Anxious for his
soul, and satisfied that the enterprise was an inspiration of God, he
was eager to bear part in it. Olier soon found three others: and the
six together formed the germ of the Society of Notre-Dame de Montreal.
Among them they raised the sum of seventy-five thousand livres,
equivalent to about as many dollars at the present day.