WE SAILED up the St Lawrence on the first day of June, our destination being Three Rivers, a village which lay about half-way between Quebec and Montreal and some ninety miles from each; it was so named from the three rivers which joined their current close above it and then fell as one into the St Lawrence. Here we expected that the enemy would make a stand.
In our passage we were entertained by many beautiful landscapes, the banks being in many places very bold and steep and shaded with lofty trees, now in young leaf. What particularly struck our attention was the beautiful disposition of the towns and villages we passed. Nearly all the settlements in Canada were situated upon the banks of rivers; which was by no means the case in other parts of America, as I afterwards found. The churches appeared frequently and seemed kept in the neatest repair, most of them showing bright spires of tin. It puzzled me why these spires did not rust; but I later discovered that it was from the dryness of the air and from a method they have of nailing on the squares of tin diagonally, the corners folded over the heads of the nails, so as to keep moisture from intruding. The houses were of logs, but much more compact and better built than those which I was to see in the rest of America: the logs were more closely joined and, instead of being left rough and uneven on the outside, were trimmed with the adze, and whitewashed. It was pleasing beyond description to double a tree-covered headland in the evening and perceive one of these villages opening to view, its houses close upon the river, rosy with the setting sun, and the spire of its church twinkling bright through the leafy trees.
The air became so mild and temperate that we imagined ourselves transported into another climate; yet I noticed that hardly a house on the whole river had its windows thrown open; for the French-Canadians loved a close, stifling heat as dearly as they loved the tobacco-pipes which gurgled constantly in their mouths – I once saw a boy of three years puffing away at one.
The tide still ebbed and flowed in the river as far as Three Rivers, but not many miles beyond. We disembarked about twenty miles below this place, where the left-hand bank was flat, and much corn and fruit was grown. This was June 5th, and we marched along the river-road all day, with the regimental music ahead of us, funding great enjoyment in the use of our legs. We remarked upon the extraordinary speed with which the crops sprouted and the trees leafed, soon as winter had departed, as also upon the very slovenly manner of farming here in use. It appeared that manure was seldom put upon the fields, considered already rich enough by nature, but was instead thrown into the river. The sandy earth was merely turned up lightly with a plough and the grain scattered in furrows which were far from regular. More than half the fields also had been left without any fences, exposed to the teeth and hooves of cattle. However, the Habitants were beginning to be more industrious and better farmers; because, since the English came, the greed and rapacity of their feudal landlords, the Seigneurs, had been somewhat curbed. Beforehand, it was not worth their while to accumulate any surplus of corn or maple-sugar or fuel, because it would all be taken from them under one pretext or another; but now they counted on the protection of the Governor and were assured of a steady market for their produce, owing to the energy of the English merchants of Montreal and Quebec, who sent boats to collect it on fixed days. Yet for their Seigneurs they still had a habit of reverence, and were bound to them by certain ties of vassalage, such as being obliged to take their corn to be ground only at the Seigneur’s mill, under payment of a heavy fine, however inconvenient the journey.
The Seigneurs lived in a simple style and were often poorer than their vassals, for they were forbidden by pride to engage in the tilling of the soil or any mechanical task; but at the sight of a beaver hat, however shabby, every red night-cap was doffed. This disgust of mechanical employment was shared by the vassal, who was usually related by marriage with a Seigneurial family, and, though he condescended to till the soil, would hold it beneath him to set up as a blacksmith or boot-maker. In consequence, the Canadians had great scorn for the invaders from New England when they were aware that even their officers were tradesmen and artisans.
The women of the Seigneurial class affected long cloaks of scarlet silk, in contrast with those of a similar colour, made of cloth, worn by the plebeians, and a kind of worsted cap with great coloured loops of ribbon. If any woman without a right to these distinctions were to be seen attired in them, they would be torn from her, even in a crowded gathering.
The peasant girls were very pretty, but only the young ones; for their beauty closed prematurely. They wore charming sleeveless bodices in blue or scarlet, petticoats of a different colour and wide-brimmed straw hats. Some sat spinning in the open air outside their house doors. They did most of the farm labour, the men being in general indolent, except when on some adventurous expedition in search of furs. The farms were not in general large, grazing thirty or forty sheep, and about a dozen cows, along with five or six oxen for the plough. The cows were small, but very good for the farmers’ use. The people seemed not only immeasurably better circumstanced than the peasants of Ireland, but (a comparison I was able to make in later years) a great deal better than most of the English themselves. Every dwelling-house had a small orchard attached and at evening the return of the herds and flocks from the woods was a very pleasant sight. The swine were also allowed to roam wild in the woods; these were very fierce, and the hardy manner of their life greatly improved the flavour of the flesh and the quality of the bristles for brush-making.
We halted in a small village about an hour after disembarking, and Lieutenant Kemmis, who knew a little French, asked a French farmer, who had come out of his house to watch the troops go by, how far it was to Three Rivers. ‘Oh,’ replied he, ‘about twenty pipes, sir.’ This strange method of computation, which was the common one on the river, represented time rather than distance: the time that it would take to smoke a pipe, according to the element which one used, land or water, and in the latter case according to whether the journey was upstream or down. For men walking along, in the leisurely stroll used by these Frenchmen, ‘a pipe’ was about three-quarters of a mile.
The same farmer, who, in spite of the warmth of the weather, wore a coarse blanket coat tied about his body with a worsted sash, and the habitual red woollen night-cap, invited the Lieutenant and myself into his house for a drink. It was of a single storey, with three or four compartments and a large garret a-top, where in winter he stored his frozen provisions.
I looked about me with interest. The interior of the living-room was neatly boarded and the furniture plain and solid. There was a close iron stove with a long line over it for the drying of dish-clouts and clothing. Strips of stout paper were still tightly pasted about the window to keep out the blasts and snow of winter. A crowd of about thirteen people, seated at a long table on stools, were eating their dinner with wooden spoons from wooden bowls (hollowed out from the knots of the curly maple-tree) and drinking cider from tankards of unglazed earthenware. Their bread was sour and black, and the dinner was a great pot of potatoes, cabbage, and beef boiled to shreds. The smell in the room was a curious admixture of sweat, stew, garlic, tobacco, and sulphur. We had not been there above five minutes when we felt our heads beginning to swim, for the stove was roaring hot and giving off noxious fumes.
‘Good God, my friend,’ exclaimed the Lieutenant, ‘do you never open the window even in the hottest day of summer?’
Our host ruminated a while and then shook his head.
‘And why not, pray? Would it not benefit your health?’ For the Lieutenant was aware that the French were much subject to the consumption, which these stoves invited.
He puffed at his pipe. ‘It is not a custom of the Habitants,’ he told us at last; and I was to learn that this same reason was habitually given by his countrymen for many other eccentric refusals to behave in a common-sense manner. So we drank off our cider, which was very rough in the mouth, thanked him, and staggered out again into the road – a very good one too, because the Corvée of France was still in operation hereabouts, which provided forced labour for the maintenance of public works. This road was ditched on both sides and curved in the centre for dryness, and the ruts constantly filled up with stones. A pleasant breeze blew off the river, which was about two miles broad, so that vessels of considerable size sailing in midstream appeared like wherries.
We had the luck to observe two sea-wolves sporting in the river, within musket-shot. To have disturbed them by a volley would have been a wanton act, for had we wounded or killed them we should not have been able to recover their bodies; nor did we need fresh meat, being abundantly supplied with very good beef. The sea-wolf, so-called from his howling, is an amphibian creature. His head resembles that of a dog. He has four very short legs, of which the fore ones have nails, but the hind ones terminate in fins. The largest animals weigh upwards of two thousand pounds and are of different colours. Their flesh is good eating, but the profit of it lies in its oil, which is proper for burning and for currying leather. Their skins do excellently for travellers’ trunks, and when well-tanned make shoes and boots that do not admit water, and lasting covers for seats. I never saw a sea-cow, though this animal was also found in the river: larger than the sea-wolf but resembling him in figure. The sea-cow is as white as snow and has two teeth, of the thickness and length of a man’s arm, that look like horns and are of the finest ivory. These beasts were seldom taken at sea, and on shore only by a stratagem. The people of Nova Scotia used to tie a bull to a stake fixed on the shore to the depth of about two feet of water; they then covertly tormented him by twisting his tail until he roared. As soon as the sea-cows heard this they would take it as a signal from one of their own kind and swim towards the shore; when they reached shallow water they would crawl to the bull on their short, awkward legs and be taken without difficulty.
I later saw several schools of porpoises playing about in the river: each was said to yieId a hogshead of oil, and of their skins were made warm musket-proof waistcoats. They were mostly white and when they rose to the surface had the appearance of hogs. At night, if I may use an Irishism (being Irish born), they often caused beautiful fireworks in the water, especially when two schools crossed each other, a continuous stream of light gliding with each member and curving in and out.
It must not be thought that we were so distracted by the interesting sights of our march that we forgot the purpose for which it was made; namely, to throw back the American invaders out of Canada. We felt indeed an unquestioning assurance that the Americans, fighting not in defence of their homes but as invaders of a foreign country with which they had nothing in common, would have no chance against us. They would lack the opportunity to shoot from behind stone walls at a column in line of march as at Lexington, or to defend a prepared position against frontal attack as at Bunker’s Hill; nor could they count upon the assistance or even the neutrality of the Habitants. They were accustomed to fight as individuals not as an army; and in battles in open country, as this was, victory must always attend the side which shows the most perfect discipline and the closest subordination to the instructions of its commander – so long as he be not a perfect fool, as very few of our generals happened to be.
The Americans who opposed us consisted of three several expeditions. First, the two thousand besiegers of Quebec, who upon General Carleton’s sortie early in May – ‘to see’, as he said, ‘what these mighty boasters are about’ – had fled almost without resistance, abandoning the whole of their artillery and stores. To these were added two thousand new troops under General Tomson, who had been sent up from Boston to assist at the capture of Quebec; they could be spared for the service because General Howe had in March been forced to evacuate Boston, bag and baggage. That they arrived too late was due to mismanagement and dissension. Besides these, three and a half thousand men had arrived under General Sullivan, and Colonel Benedict Arnold from Montreal with his three hundred veterans. This was a respectable force in numbers, but we had thirteen thousand men to set against their eight thousand, and were far better served with artillery. The Americans were reported to be concentrated at Sorel, some forty miles up the river from us and on the other bank. Between them and us lay the broad Lake of St Peter with its thousand islands, which would be the next stage of our journey up to Montreal.
We arrived at Three Rivers, after being ferried over the intervening stream on batteaux, a sort of barge peculiar to Canada, flat-bottomed and with both ends built very sharp and exactly alike. The sides were about four feet high and there were benches and rowlocks for oarsmen; the batteau also carried sail, though it was very awkward either to sail or row. Its advantage was that it drew very little water and could be propelled by poles, where there was no wind and where oars would not serve. The poles were about eight feet in length, extremely light and shod with iron. The current in the centre of the St Lawrence River was so strong that to stem it a crew must keep close to the shore and use their poles in unison. The batteau was steered by a man with a pole in the hinder part, who shifted it from side to side to keep the course even.
We found Three Rivers a place of disappointing size, though the third town, in point of importance, in Canada. It contained but two hundred and fifty houses, most of them built of wood and indifferent in appearance, two extinct monasteries, an active convent of Ursuline nuns, and a barrack with capacity for five hundred troops. The town used to be much frequented by Indians, who brought furs thither down the rivers after which it is named; but by this time the trade had been diverted to Montreal as being a more accessible market to the Indian trapping-grounds, and Three Rivers was no more than a port of call between Montreal and Quebec.
My company were lodged for the night in a barn belonging to the Ursulines and were shown great kindness by the Chaplain of the sisterhood. He invited Lieutenant Kemmis and myself to enter a part of the convent which could be visited without leave of the Bishop – as the part where the nuns dwelt could not. We were conducted to a handsome parlour with a charming view of the convent gardens, and presently in came gliding the Mother Superior and a bevy of lay-sisters, who were not bound by the same strict vows as the other women. I could only nod and smile, but Lieutenant Kemmis offered a number of gallantries in halting French, which greatly pleased the old woman. The dress of the Order, a poor one, consisted of a black stuff gown, a handkerchief of white linen with rounded corners looped about the throat, a head-piece of the same material which allowed only the centre part of the face to show, a black gauze veil which screened half even of that and overflowed the shoulders, and a heavy silver cross suspended from the breast.
We were shown specimens of the handicrafts of the Sisterhood, by selling which they helped to support themselves; and were expected to purchase some specimens, which we did. It is unusual for soldiers on the eve of a battle to fill their pockets and knapsacks with a heap of keepsakes in fancy-work to send to their friends – but we could not disappoint these poor women. We bought from them two pocket-books, a work-basket, a dressing-box, all of which were made of birch-bark embroidered in elk hair, dyed in various brilliant colours; also some models of Indian tomahawks, scalping-knives, calumets, and those birch-bark canoes for the manufacture of which Three Rivers was famous. They packed them up for us very neatly in little boxes kept for the purpose, of the same bark.
The next day we spent in drill, both by platoons and companies, and Major Bolton impressed upon us that what we had perhaps regarded hitherto as idle ceremony had a practical and deadly purpose. He declared that we must show the same steadiness and unanimity upon the field as upon the parade. In the afternoon I went from curiosity to watch a number of Indians at their canoe-making, a work performed with the utmost neatness. They began with a framework of thick, tough rods of the hickory nut-tree, bound together with remarkably stout strips of elm-bark. Over this they sewed, with deer sinews, large strips of birch-bark, which resembles that of the cork-tree but is of much closer grain and far more pliable. A thick coat of pitch was laid over the seams between the different pieces. The inside was lined with two layers of thin pieces of pine, laid in a contrary direction to each other. A canoe of this sort was so light that two men without fatigue could carry one on their shoulders, with accommodation for six persons. It was wonderful to see with what velocity these canoes might be paddled: in a few minutes a keel-boat rowed by an equal number of men with oars would be left behind, a mere speck on the river. But they were very easily overturned by the least improper movement; and the Habitants preferred more solid canoes hollowed out from a single log of red cedar.
The work was entirely performed by women, who undertook all the labour of the tribe: such as procuring and transporting fuel, planting corn and vegetables, cooking, dressing skins, doctoring, making household instruments and utensils. The men supplied the food and defended the camp, but considered it beneath them to undertake any other labour.
I observed a number of men lounging about on the bank, smoking their calumets, a combination of pipe and axe. One of them, sitting cross-legged in his blanket-coat with a black face and untrimmed locks, which I was told signified mourning and unsatisfied revenge, offered me a handsome otter-skin pouch. I opened it and found inside a lump of tobacco in one compartment and dried leaves in the other. Upon my looking puzzled, he took the pouch from me, extracted the tobacco lump, cut it into shreds in the palm of his hand with his scalping-knife, rubbed it together with the dry leaves, which were of the sumach-tree, and finally, drawing my pipe from my waist-belt, where I had put it, stuffed the bowl with the mixture. He struck fire into a bit of touchwood with his flint and steel, kindled the pipe and put it between my lips. These were simple and familiar actions but performed with indescribable harmony and grace. Except in their war-dances or when they were intoxicated, I never saw an Indian make any movement or gesture that was not beautiful to the eye. I sat for some minutes watching this man, who appeared to be a very sincere and honest smoker. He never removed or replaced his pipe in his mouth without due solemnity, and the act of inhaling the smoke seemed to be closely akin to some religious ceremony. He remained all the time in the profoundest melancholy. A squaw who could speak a little English, of the simple ungrammatical sort used by the Montreal traders, told me his story. He had lost three children from the smallpox, and his brother had been scalped during a fur-getting voyage in the far north. He wished to go to war himself in order to change his luck, but his Sachem had restrained him. His name was Strong Soup, and he wore tied on his legs the furs of polecats, which were the insignia of acknowledged valour. The polecat furs he had won for a deed of desperate daring against the Algonquins, undertaken to erase the stigma of a previous misfortune: when he had fled from the same Algonquins weaponless and leaving his breech-clout in their hands. His revenge was to kill three Algonquin warriors, two squaws, and the only infant child of their chief; lifting four scalps in the act. The popular jeer against him in the matter of the lost breech-clout was there-upon forbidden by his war-chief by means of the public crier.
One other incident of interest occurred while I was here. The woman who told me Strong Soup’s story had two children with her, an infant and a girl of perhaps seven years old. The infant was swaddled in a blanket and bound tightly to a piece of board somewhat longer than itself. Bent pieces of wood protected the child’s face, lest the board should fall, and it was suspended upon the branch of a birch-tree within reach of the mother’s hand: she kept it swinging from side to side like a pendulum while still engaged in her canoe-making. The little girl was covered with a loose cotton garment and was very forward. She came behind me and fingered my accoutrements in a way that the mother regarded as unmannerly. The punishment was not a string of curses or a slap, as it would have been in Ireland, but a stern look and a handful of water scooped from the river and flung in her face, which abashed the child so much that she crept away and hid beneath a canoe. To comfort her, I presented her with a sewing-box that I had bought from the nuns; which she gazed at with evident exultation, and said an eloquent speech of thanks.
‘What does she say?’ I asked the woman.
‘She wish you kill plenty bears, plenty deer, take many scalps. Say your hand like a sieve, give very good gifts.’
The woman and the child had most delicate, harmonious voices, which was the rule rather than the exception, I found; whereas every Indian, almost, with whom I ever conversed spoke as if he had a hot potato in his mouth or a heavy weight upon his chest, pronouncing his words laboriously from the lower part of his throat and moving the lips only very slightly.
The women were dressed in moccasins, leggings, and a loose short shirt like the men, but fastened with silver brooches at the neck. They also wore pieces of blue or green cloth folded closely around their middles and reaching to the knees; and silver bangles on their wrists. I shall have more to say later on the subject of these interesting people; but I cannot postpone a record of my astonishment when the squaw with whom I had been conversing took down the cradle from the tree and, unswaddling the young child, hugged it for a while to her tawny bosom – for I perceived that its body was as fair as that of an English child. I was to observe later than even negro children were not perfectly black when born, but acquired their jetty hue gradually; just as in the vegetable world the first tender blade of spring, on peeping through the soil, turns from white to pale green, and to emerald only when May is come.
We were asleep on straw in the barn of the Ursuline Convent when the drums suddenly began to beat and in came Lieutenant Kemmis, calling for his groom. He appeared to be in great animation.
‘Well, my gallant lads,’ he cried, ‘we are to have a smack at ’em this morning, it seems. See that you fall in quick and without confusion. Sergeant Lamb, pray inspect the men’s arms and ammunition. Pay especial attention to the flints. If any appear worn, serve out new from the box – you have the key?’
‘Very well, your Honour.... Fall in, men, and tumble to it! Your Honour, are they upon us?’
‘They crossed over a brigade of fifty batteaux last night from Sorel and landed at Point du Lac, about ten miles upstream from here. We are ordered to join the vanguard with the flank companies of the other regiments.’
Soon we were marching out into the darkness along the river-road, in column of route. Our company, being the eldest light infantry company present, had the right to lead the column of route. It was daylight before we came upon their vanguard. They were marching along the river-road in a careless manner, like a congregation coming out of church, as if not expecting to meet with any opposition. They were slender, loose-limbed men dressed in dark green hunting shirts, long mud-coloured breeches, with tan gaiters, They wore tan ruffles around their necks, at the bottom of their coats, on their shoulders, elbows, and about their wrists. Their hats were round and dark with a broad brim folded up in three places, and in one fold was stuck a sprig of green. This colouring, being in perfect imitation of the hues of a forest, made them very inconspicuous in woody country, whereas a red coat showed up like a poppy in a stubble-held. Here, however, in the open land between blue water and the brilliant fresh-green of young corn they were not indifferent targets. We quickly executed one of the new manœuvres that we had learned from The Thirty-third in Dublin, shaking out across a cornfield. There we fired two very disciplined volleys, to the great scandal and grief of the farmer, who tried to head us off with shouts and curses, caring nothing for the bullets which were already whizzing about him. ‘Sacré Nom du Grand Archange Saint Michel et de tons ses anges inférieurs – éloignez-vous bien vite de mes putats, assassins, on je vais le dire au Général Carleton.’ Which, it seems, was to say: ‘Sacred Name of the Good Archangel St Michael and all his inferior angels, get you gone quick from my potatoes, you hired robbers, or I shall go and complain to General Carleton!’
A bullet happened to strike the pipe out of the honest fellow’s mouth, and a clay splinter gashed his cheek. Suddenly realizing the hazards of his position between two tares, he leaped like a hare for the ditch, and lay there cursing and shouting. The burden of his song was that he would on the very next day get aboard his boat and descend to Quebec to complain of the outrage to General Carleton, who never failed to give redress.
The Americans did not stay within range, but ran to hold a slight ridge where they began to scoop shallow trenches in the light soil. Reinforcements came up on either side. Our orders were to hold fast and conserve our fire: if they attacked, we were to charge bayonets and meet them as they came.
This being the first skirmish I ever was engaged in, it really appeared to me to be a very serious matter, especially when the bullets came whistling by our ears. There were a few veterans among us who had been well used to this kind of work, among them old Sergeant Fitzpatrick, who went about with a hymn of the Rev. Charles Wesley’s upon his lips and a devout anger in his eyes. But Mad Johnny Maguire took it very easy. ‘Oh, by the powers, my honeys, take it easy!’ he said. ‘This is but only the froth of battle. I was with the dear Ninth in Sixty-two when we stormed the Moro Fort at Havannah. That was the real brew, full and deep, by Jesus Christ!’
He had told us all, during my inspection of their arms and pouches that morning: ‘Now there’s no need to be alarmed if you hear the sound of a bullet fired against you, for that means it isn’t there. It’s the bullet you don’t hear that’s the bother, for often you notice afterwards that it has killed you.’
‘Did that often happen to you, Johnny Maguire?’ we asked him.
‘Not to the best of my recollection,’ he answered very seriously, ‘but I had a devil of a big fright once or twice.’
Soon the cannon from the vessels in the river began to roar, and the held-pieces which accompanied the van shot over our heads. The fire from the river was particularly severe, for the ships stood in close and blazed from the flank at point-blank. In a battle all sense of the passage of time is absent, as in childhood or during play at cards when the stakes are high. It may have been five minutes or half an hour before we observed that the Americans were going away in two’s and three’s and that their fire was slackening. We charged bayonets and sprang forward at them with a shout. They made no attempt to stand, which would indeed have been folly in their situation. They had suddenly learned that a brigade of British troops had been landed from transports some distance in their rear, and their one thought now was to regain their batteaux, lying a matter of three miles away, before they were cut off. A few valiant or obstinate men stayed behind, firing to the last, but singularly little execution was done: in the whole course of the day our army lost no more than a dozen men killed or disabled. The retreating colonists had not far to run before they were in woodland: we pushed so rapidly ahead, to prevent their making a stand on the road, that their laggards took to the trees.
The Americans won the race to the boats, of which only two were taken, and were soon safe away among the islands and shallows of St Peter’s Lake, where our ships could not pursue them. Two generals, several inferior officers, and two hundred men surrendered in the woods. I had no personal adventures to boast of afterwards; the only American whom I shot at, as he ran from me in the forest, I missed. So ended the brief, glorious, and unremarkable battle of Three Rivers: of which the Americans later spoke as if it had been a great victory, declaring that as many of our people had fallen as at Bunker’s Hill, while their own losses were insignificant.
On the day following, we left Three Rivers and were put aboard our transports with all expedition; the wind springing up fair, the fleet sailed towards Sorel. The greatest breadth of St Peter’s Lake, through which we were now sailing, was about fourteen miles, and its length about eighteen. The number of islands here was so extraordinary that it was impossible not to feel astonishment that such large vessels as visited Montreal could pass between them; and indeed the channel was very intricate. Lieutenant Kemmis found the prospect highly romantic, especially since many islands were peopled with camps of Indians dressed in their festival clothes to salute the convoy as it passed, and birch-bark canoes were continually speeding in and out of the vessels, the Indians shouting lengthy exhortations and greetings. The only intelligible part of these was an insistent demand for Christians’ fire-water, as spirits were called; for, until the English landed on the American continent, no intoxicating liquors were known to these happy people.
The Friendship grounded on a sand-bank in the very middle of the lake. Some men were sent out in a boat with an anchor, which they dropped in deep water; this gave us purchase to heave the vessel clear, so that we were only stuck fast for two hours. However, it was found impossible to recover the anchor, which loss caused such grief and vexation to the Captain as I should not have expected him to express for that of the whole ship’s burden and company. With captains of hired transports, it was evident that the crew, the cargo, and the welfare of their country were but secondary objects. One of them about this time gave the frigate guarding a convoy the slip, and got safe into Boston with a cargo of fifteen hundred barrels of gunpowder, which he sold to the Americans for a sum which made him rich for life.
Our journey from Three Rivers to Sorel at the head of the lake took five days, which was one too many, for upon our disembarking we found the fires of the American encampment still burning, but the men gone. It was here that we saw the last of the Friendship. We disembarked with all our baggage and, leaving the St Lawrence (which runs eight miles an hour at this point), marched south up the Sorel River towards Lake Champlain. A second column pursued another part of the American forces towards Montreal. We began our march in three columns under the command of Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne, M.P., an officer of the greatest experience and universally esteemed by his men, yet somewhat of a grumbler and too easily carried away by his natural eloquence into an exaggeration of injuries received from, and faults committed by, those in authority over him. It was an excellent army, and a great many men served in it who had fought against the French and Spanish. The mistakes that we committed were therefore totally different from those of the Americans: accustomed only to warfare in Indian fashion, they erred in too little regularity of organization and discipline, we often in too great rigidity. Our arrangements for the march, for bivouacking, for reconnaissance of ground, for the placing of outposts, and for the supply of ammunition, victuals, and forage, were admirable; as they were throughout the war, consistent with circumstances. But we were always a few hours’ march behind the retreating enemy, who, notwithstanding their haste, took care to destroy by fire all batteaux, ships and military stores that they could not take with them, and many houses besides.
Their distresses were very great: a British army of superior strength hanging close on their rear, their men obliged to haul loaded batteaux up the rapids by main strength, often to their middles in water. They were likewise very short of lead for running their bullets, of paper and thread for cartridge-making, and of every sort of medicament. This last was the most serious lack of all, since great numbers of them were labouring under that terrible disease, the smallpox, which always struck so fatally in America. We had orders not to handle any belongings left behind by them in their flight, nor to occupy any dwellings where they had lodged. Their dead and dying being left behind in considerable numbers, we provided regular burial squads, consisting of men who had already had suffered from the disease.
The sickly season of the year had come, and the Americans felt such terror of death by smallpox that they suffered themselves to be inoculated against it by their surgeons – that is, the fetid matter from one suffering from the disease was pushed under the fingernails of a healthy man. The intention was that he should take the disease, but not badly, and thereafter be immune against the natural infection. In America, ever since the great epidemic of 1764, it had been the custom to have inoculation frolics: to make up a cheerful party of persons of both sexes, in a spacious house with an enclosed garden, for all to be infected together. They could count on two or three days in bed, and six weeks of quarantine spent in pleasant lounging, drinking, amatory and political discourse, cards, prayers, and horse-play. In these conditions, a few were seriously sick, some died, but very many lives were saved. However, the present was no time for such a frolic; the poor creatures being already worn out with the hardships of war and unable to endure the poison. Moreover, no quarantine was possible and those who were inoculated passed on the disease to their comrades. The surgeons were ordered to discontinue the practice, but this did not hinder the men from inoculating one another and performing the operation in a very dirty manner. Though the fatigues of our march were great, we could, I am sure, have overtaken the Americans had instinct not kept our men from increased exertions: we slackened our pace sufficiently to avoid infection from our sick adversaries.
The Canadians showed violent resentment against the invaders for bringing so much ill luck and so little real money into the country. Many of them had been influenced by hopes of gain or by prophecies of a British defeat to take a decided part in the Americans’ favour; and this against the warnings of their priests, who refused to confess any rebel. Nor could the clergy have well been expected to adopt any other course of action, Congress having been so highly indiscreet, not to say double-faced; for while pretending great attachment to the Habitants in their struggle against British oppression, they had at the same time published an address to the people of England, which totally contradicted this. The address warmly indicted Parliament for the countenance it had given to Popery in Canada, which they declared to be the dissemination of impiety, persecution, and murder in every part of the globe. Now, though Congress had assured these Canadian rebels, but a few months before, that ‘we will never abandon our Canadian friends to the fury of our common enemies’, they were left exposed to the heavy penalties annexed to the crime of aiding or comforting His Majesty’s foes. The retreating army could only recommend the rebel Habitants to throw themselves on the mercy of the Government; and this, though ironically intended, proved to be good advice. To the best of my knowledge (I was in Canada for twelve months after this) none of them was either imprisoned or otherwise punished by General Carleton.
On June 17th we came to the hills of Chambly, some forty miles beyond Sorel and there took possession of the old French castle. We found that all the wooden buildings of the place, and all the boats too large to be dragged up the rapids, had been reduced to ashes. The French people hereabouts were greatly relieved that in this new war they were not to be called up for forced labour, as in the old days. We were told that General Montcalm had once visited the castle in the last war to assure himself that it was in a correct posture of defence; the peasants came dropping on their knees about him to implore him to abate the oppression and tyranny of their militia captains. Among others, the owner of the saw-mill complained that, loyal subject of King Louis though he was, he had been reduced to extremities by the Corvée – his harvest was lost, his family starving, and his two remaining horses had perished of overwork that very day. Monsieur Montcalm looked sternly at him and then, thoughtfully twirling his Cross of St Louis, remarked: ‘But you have the hides still, have you not? That’s a deal, a great deal!’
It was at Chambly that our General Prescott had been captured by General Montgomery in the preceding year, together with eleven ships and several companies of men of the Seventh and Twenty-sixth Regiments. He was soon exchanged with the Americans for General Sullivan, who was now opposing us, and put in command of Newport, Rhode Island; but there he was again captured by a party of raiders as he slept, and carried off without his breeches. He was a very peevish, foolish man and suffered tortures from the gout. Our people then bought him back in exchange for another American general, Charles Lee; not so much because they needed poor General Prescott as because the return of General Lee to an enemy command would embarrass General Washington, to whom he was openly hostile. General Prescott won the jocular title of ‘Continental Currency’.
On the next day we occupied the redoubts at St John’s; where the enemy in their precipitation had left behind twenty-two pieces of cannon, unspiked and with their ammunition unexploded. The country that we had marched through until we came to Chambly was flat and without interest except for the unusual birds, flowers, trees, and animals. We saw grey squirrels, and deer; and Smutchy Steel had the misfortune to catch a creature resembling a bushy-tailed grey cat streaked with white, which was pursued towards us by a pair of our dogs. This animal, which the Canadians called Devil’s Child, discharges its urine when attacked, which infects the air with an intolerable stench. Smutchy had his black linen gaiters soiled and was fain to strip them off and abandon them. There were sweet wild raspberries in plenty beside our route.
A bear crossed a clearing and I had a snapping shot at him, but missed. This animal was rather shy than fierce; he would seldom attack a man, and fled in terror from a yapping dog. Only in July was he dangerous, for this was his mating season and he was abominably jealous. Then he grew very lean for passion and rage, and abstained from eating. His flesh acquired so disagreeable a relish that the Indians would not eat him; but, this season over, he became fat again and ate his kill of honey, and of wild grapes and other autumnal fruit.
Of trees there were an infinite and delightful variety, many of them excessively tall, and very few exactly corresponding in foliage or bark to British trees. For example, there were three different sorts of walnut-tree – the hard, the tender, and the bitter. Of the tender, the wood of which was almost incorruptible in water or the ground, the Canadians made their coffins; the nut of the bitter yielded a very good sort of lamp-oil; the nut of the hard was the best to eat, but caused costiveness. There were beech and elm in great abundance, and the sugar-bearing maple, and cedars, and wild plum, and cherry.
But every local advantage is set off by disadvantages. When we camped at evening we were obliged to clear off the underwood and cut away the small trees from about us: on such occasions we were constantly assailed by enormous swarms of mosquitoes. They could not be kept from attacking us even by the smoke or flame of large fires, which we were always obliged to kindle. The fine perfumes and blooming abundance of such luxuriant regions as these are thus lost from enjoyment by man. For the loss of peace and comfort caused by angry and odious vermin nothing can compensate; and an Englishman’s blood being richer or less hardened against mosquito bites than the American’s, he suffers almost to madness.
We pressed on for a week past the swamp of St John’s and Nut Island, until we reached the northern reaches of Lake Champlain, which was narrow and long, running south for a hundred miles to Crown Point, where it was linked with the smaller waters of Lake George. For want of boats we could not pursue the enemy farther, and they had several armed vessels on the lake besides. But we had seen them safe out of Canada, and between the smallpox and the fighting they had in a month lost five thousand men. The smallpox accounted for by far the greater number of these. We heard that at one time two of their regiments had not a single man in health, another only six, a fourth only forty – two more were nearly in the same condition. If the rest of the war were to take the same course, we would soon be home again. However, we were obliged to pause now in order to transport a fleet up to Lake Champlain sufficiently strong to outgun the enemy’s schooners which patrolled it and prevented our further advance.