"My native land, good night."—Byron. The end of March or the beginning of April, 1813, found me at the Army DepÔt in the Isle of Wight. Sir Walter Scott in his Surgeon's Daughter, says that no one who has ever visited that delightful spot can ever forget it, and I fully agree with him, but though perfectly susceptible of the impressions which its numberless beauties leave on the mind, I must confess that the view of a fleet of transports rounding St. Helens to take us to our destination, would have been considered by myself and my comrades, as a pleasanter prospect than all Hampshire could offer to our admiration. I shall not stay to describe the state of military society in those days at the Army DepÔt at Parkhurst barracks and the neighbouring town of Newport. It has been much better done than I could expect to do, by Major Spencer Muggridge, in Blackwood's Magazine; all I can do as a subaltern, is fully to endorse the field officer's statement, and to declare that it is a just, graphic and by no means over-charged description. The fact is, all the worse characters in the army were congregated at the Isle of Wight; men who were afraid to join their regiments from the indifferent estimation they were held in by their brother officers. These stuck to the depÔt, and the arrival of a fleet of transports at Spithead or the Mother-bank, was a signal for a general sickness among these worthies. And this was peculiarly the case with those who were bound for Canada, for they knew full well if they could shirk past the month of August, there was no chance of a call on their services until the month of April following. And many scamps took advantage of this. I know one fellow who managed to avoid joining his regiment abroad for no less than three years. I took my departure from this military paradise for the first time, for this country, in the beginning of August, 1813, in a small, ill-found, undermanned, over-crowded transport, as transports in those days were very apt to be; and after a long, weary, and tempestuous voyage of three months, was landed at Quebec in the beginning Arrived at Quebec, we reported ourselves, as in duty bound, to the General Commanding, and by his orders we left a subaltern to command the recruits (most of whom, by the way, were mere boys,) and to strengthen the Garrison of Quebec, and the venerable old colonel and myself made all haste to join our regiment up the country. As my worthy old commander was a character, some account of him may not be uninteresting. Donald McB—— was born in the celebrated winter of 1745-46, while his father, an Invernesshire gentleman, was out with Prince Charles Edward, who, on the unfortunate issue of that campaign for the Jacobite interest, was fain to flee to Donald, meanwhile, was left with his kindred in the Highlands, where he grew in all the stinted quantity of grace that is to be found in that barren region, until his seventh year, when he was sent to join his family in Dunkirk. Here he was educated, and as his father's military experience had given him no great love for the profession of arms, he was in due time bound apprentice to his brother-in-law, an eminent surgeon of that town, and might have become a curer instead of inflicter of broken heads, or at least murdered men more scientifically than with the broadsword; but fate ordered it otherwise. Donald had an objection as strong to the lancet as his father could possibly have to the sword. Had the matter been coolly canvassed, it is hard to say which mode of murder would have obtained the preference, but, always hasty, he did not go philosophically to work, and an accident decided his fate as it has done that of many greater men. A young nun of great beauty, who had lately taken the veil, had the misfortune to break her leg, and Donald's master, being medical man to the convent, he very reasonably hoped that he would assist in the setting of it—attending upon This settled the point. His father, seeing that his aversion to the healing art was insuperable, procured a commission in the Regiment de Dillon or Irish Brigade of the French Service. In this he served for several years, until he had got pretty well up among the lieutenants, and in due time might have figured among the marshals of Napoleon; but the American Revolution breaking out, and it being pretty apparent that France and Great Britain must come into hostile collision, his father, though utterly abhorring the reigning dynasty, could not bear the idea of a son of his fighting against his country and clan, persuaded him to resign his commission in the French Service, and sent him to Scotland with letters of recommendation to some of his kindred and friends, officers in the newly raised Frazer Highlanders (since the 71st,) whom he joined in Greenock in the year 1776, and soon after embarked with them for America in the capacity of a gentleman volunteer, thus beginning the world once more at the age of thirty. After serving in this regiment till he obtained his ensigncy, he was promoted to be lieutenant He now, from motives of economy as well as to be near his surviving relatives, retired to Dunkirk; but the approaching revolution soon called him out again, and his promotion, which, though like that of Dugald Dalgetty, it was "dooms slow at first," did come at last. Now after thirty-seven years' hard service in the British Army, (to say nothing of fourteen in the French) in North America, the West Indies, South America, the Cape of Good Hope, Java and India, he found himself a Lieutenant-Colonel of a second battalion serving in Canada. Such is a brief memoir of my old commanding officer. He was a warm-hearted, hot-tempered, jovial, gentlemanly old veteran, who enjoyed the present and never repined at the past; so it may well be imagined that I was in high good luck with such a compagnon de voyage. Hearing that the American Army, under General Wilkinson, was about to make descent on The roads, however, were declared impracticable, and the only steamboat the Canadas then rejoiced in, though now they must possess nearly one hundred, had sailed that day, and was not expected to return for nearly a week; so it was determined we should try our luck in one of the wretched river craft which in those days enjoyed the carrying trade between Quebec and Montreal. Into the small cabin, therefore of one of these schooners we stowed ourselves. Though the winds were light, we managed to make some way as long as we could take advantage of the flood-tide, and lay by during the ebb; but after this our progress was slow indeed; not entirely from the want of a fair wind, but from the cursed dilatory habits of Frenchmen and their Canadian descendants in all matters connected with business. At every village (and in Lower Canada there is a village at every three leagues along the banks of the St. Lawrence) our captain had or made business—a cask of wine had to be delivered to "le digne CurÉ" at one place; a box of goods to "M. le Gentilhomme de Magasin" at another; the captain's "parents" lived within a league, and he had not seen them for six weeks,—so off he must go, and no prospect of seeing him any more for that day. The cottage of the cabin boy's mother unluckily lay on the bank of the river, and we must lay to till madame came off with confitures, cabbages and clean shirts for The French, I suspect, have always been before us in Colonial policy. An arbitrary government can do things which a free one may not have the nerve to attempt, particularly among a people whose ignorance permits them to see only one side of the question. The system of land travelling in Lower Canada was better, when we became master of it, than it is now in any part of the North American Continent. At every three leagues there was a "Maison de Poste" kept by a functionary who received his license from government, and denominated a "Maitre de Poste." He was bound by his engagement to find caleches and horses for all travellers, and he made engagements with his neighbors to furnish them when his were employed. These were called "Aides de Poste"; and they received the pay when they performed the duty, deducting a small commission for the Maitre. They were bound to travel when the roads admitted of it, at a rate not less than seven miles an hour, and were not to exceed quarter of an hour in changing horses; and to prevent imposition, in the parlour of each post house, (which was also an inn,) was stuck up a printed paper, giving the distance of each post from the next, and the sum to be charged for each horse and caleche employed, as well as other regulations, with regard to the establishment, which it was necessary for a traveller to know, and any well substantiated charge against these The roads not being, as already remarked, in the best order, we did not arrive at Montreal till the end of the second day, when we were congratulated by our more lucky companions who had left Quebec in the steamboat three days later, and arrived at Montreal two days before us; and we were tantalized by a description of all the luxuries of that then little known conveyance, as contrasted with the fatigues and dÉsagrÉments of our mode of progression. For the last fifty miles of our route there was not to be seen throughout the country a single man fit to carry arms occupied about his farm or workshop; women, children, or men disabled by age or decrepitude were all that were to be met with. The news had arrived that the long threatened invasion had at last taken place, and every available man was hurrying to meet it. We came up with several regiments of militia on their line of march. They had all a serviceable effective appearance—had been pretty well drilled, and their arms being direct from the tower, were in perfectly good order, nor had they the mobbish appearance that such a levy in any other country would have had. Their capots and trowsers of home-spun stuff, and their blue tuques (night caps) were all of the same cut and color, which gave them an air of uniformity that added much to their military look, for I have always remarked that a body of men's appearance in battalion, depends much less on the fashion of their individual They marched merrily along to the music of their voyageur songs, and as they perceived our uniform as we came up, they set up the Indian War-whoop, followed by a shout of Vive le Roi along the whole line. Such a body of men in such a temper, and with so perfect a use of their arms as all of them possessed, if posted on such ground as would preclude the possibility of regular troops out-manoeuvering them, (and such positions are not hard to find in Canada,) must have been rather a formidable body to have attacked. Finding that the enemy were between us and our regiment, proceeding to join would have been out of the question. The Colonel therefore requested that we might be attached to the militia on the advance. The Commander-in-Chief finding that the old gentleman had a perfect knowledge of the French language, (not by any means so common an accomplishment in the army in those days as it is now,) gave him command of a large brigade of militia, and, like other men who rise to greatness, his friends and followers shared his good fortune, for a subaltern of our regiment who had come out in another ship and joined us at Montreal, was appointed as his Brigade Major; and I was exalted to the dignity of Principal Medical Officer to his command, and we proceeded to Lachine, the head-quarters of the advance, and where it had been determined to make the stand, in order to cover Montreal, the great commercial Our force here presented rather a motley appearance; besides a small number of the line consisting chiefly of detachments, there was a considerable body of sailors and marines; the former made tolerable Artillery men, and the latter had, I would say, even a more serviceable appearance than an equal body of the line, average it throughout the army. The fact is that during the war the marines had the best recruits that entered the army. The reason of this, as explained to me by an intelligent non-commissioned officer of that corps, was, that whereas a soldier of the line, returning on furlough to his native village, had barely enough of money to pay his travelling expenses, and support him while there, and even that with a strict attention to economy, the marine, on the other hand, on returning from a three years' cruise, had all the surplus pay and prize money of that period placed in his hands before he started, and this, with his pay going on at the same rate as that of the soldier of the line, enabled him to expend in a much more gentlemanly style of profusion than the other. The vulgar of all ranks are apt to form their opinions of things rather from their results than the causes of them, and hence they jump to the conclusion that the marine service must be just so much better than that of the line, as the one has so much more money to spend on his return home than the other. And hence, aspiring—or as This was a very brilliant little affair. Colonel Morrison of the 89th Regiment, was sent by General de Rotenburg, with a small corp amounting in all to 820 men, Regulars, Militia and Indians, to watch the motions of the American army, when it broke up from Grenadier Island, near Kingston, and to hang on and harass their rear. This was done so effectually that General Covington was detached with a body at least three times our number to drive them back. Morrison retired till he came to a spot he had selected on his downward march, and there gave them battle. Luckily for us, the first volley we fired killed General Covington, who must have been a brave fine fellow; the officer succeeding him brought his undisciplined levies too near our well-drilled troops before he deployed, and in attempting to do so, got thrown into confusion, thus giving our artillery and gun-boats an opportunity of committing dreadful slaughter Washington Irving is the only describer of your "American Teutonic Race," and this, my debut in the New World, put me down in the midst of that worthy people as unsophisticated as possible. It is refreshing, as his little Lordship of Craigcrook used to say, in this land where every man is a philosopher, and talks of government as if he had been bred at the feet of Machiavel, to meet with a specimen of genuine simplicity, perfectly aware of his own ignorance in matters which in no way concern him. Your Dutchman is the most unchangeable of all human beings, "Caelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt" applies with peculiar force to the Batavian in every clime on the face of the globe. In America, at the Cape of Good Hope, in the congenial marshes of Java, in the West Indies, and at Chinsurhae on the banks of the Ganges, the transmarine Hollander is always the same as in his own native mud of the dams and dykes of Holland,—the same in his house, his dress, his voracious and omniverous appetite, his thrift and his cleanliness. Among these good, kind, simple people, I spent a month or six weeks very pleasantly. Loyal and warmly attached to the British Crown, they followed our standard in the Revolutionary War, and obtained from government settlements in Canada when driven from their homes on the banks of the Hudson. From what I could learn This, however, could not have been the case, for had the Americans feared vengeance on the part of the British for the wrongs they inflicted on their countrymen, they must have equally feared that they would not quietly submit to injuries inflicted on men who were their loyal and faithful fellow subjects. I therefore suspect, that, Killing with kindness is the commonest cause of death I am aware of, and it is very remiss in the faculty, that it has never yet found a place in the periodical mortuary reports which they publish in great cities in a tabular form—this ought to be amended. Au reste—I was very comfortable, for, while I remained under the hospitable roof of my friend old Cobus, I had an upper room for my sleeping apartment, and the show room of the establishment for my sitting parlor, an honour and preferment which nobody of less rank them an actual line officer of the "riglars" could have presumed to aspire to; to the rest of mankind it was shut and sealed, saving on high days and holidays. This sacred chamber was furnished and decorated in the purest and most classical style of Dutch taste, the whole woodwork, and that included floor, walls and ceiling, were sedulously washed once a week with hot water and soap, vigorously applied with a scrubbing brush. The floor was nicely sanded, and the walls decorated with a tapestry of innumerable home-spun petticoats, evidently never applied to any other (I won't say meaner) purpose, On the Saturday morning (for this was the grand cleansing day) I never went forth to visit my hospital without taking my fowling piece in my hand, and made a point of never returning until sunset, as during the intervening period no animal not amphibious could possibly have existed in the domicile; after leaving them I never passed their door on the line of march without passing an hour or two with my old friends, and on such occasions I used to be honoured with the chaste salute of the worthy old dame, which was followed by my going through the same ceremony, to a strapping beauty, her niece, who was "comely to be seen," and in stature rather exceeded myself, though I stand six feet in my stocking soles. An irreverent Irish subaltern of ours impiously likened the decorous and fraternal salute with which I greeted her, to the "slap of a wet brogue against a barn door;" and the angel who in her innocence bestowed that civility on me, was known by my brother officers, who had From the end of the first few weeks that I remained here my patients gradually began to diminish,—some died, and these I buried,—some recovered by the remedies employed, or spite of them, and these I forwarded or carried with me to join the Regiment,—and others who from loss of limbs or of the use of them, might be considered as permanently rendered "hors de combat," I sent by easy stages to Montreal General Hospital, thence in the spring to be removed to England as occasion offered, thence to enjoy the honours and emoluments of a Chelsea Pension. The few that remained unfit to be removed I committed to the charge of an Hospital Mate, and proceeded with all convenient speed to join the headquarters of my Regiment. |