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 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, 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.

The Quebec Act, guaranteeing the rights of the French Canadians, had barely been put in force before the Congress of the 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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.

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 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 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 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?

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 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 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 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.

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 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 Governments that all property confiscated from Royalists during the war be restored.

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, 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 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 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 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.

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 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.

CHAPTER XIV

FROM 1812 TO 1820

Hearne surrenders—Cook on the west coast—Vancouver on Pacific—Discovery of Mackenzie River—Across to the Pacific—A smash in bad rapids—Down Fraser River—Cause of war—The Chesapeake outrage—War declared—Hull surrenders at Detroit—The fight round Niagara—Soldiers exchange jokes across gorge—The traverse at Queenston—The surrender at Queenston—1813 A dark year—Raid on Ogdensburg—Attack on Toronto—Toronto burned—Vincent's soldiers at Burlington Bay—Ill hap of all the generals—Laura Secord's heroism—Campaign in the west—Moraviantown Disaster—Chrysler's farm—De Salaberry's buglers—The charge at Chippewa—Final action at Lundy's Lane—Great heroism on both sides—Assault at Fort Erie—End of futile war

While Canada waged war for her national existence against her border neighbors to the south, as in the days of the bushrovers' raids of old, afar in the west, in the burnt-wood, iron-rock region of Lake Superior, on the lonely wind-swept prairies, at the foothills where each night's sunset etched the long shadows of the mountain peaks in somber replica across the plains, in the forested solitude of the tumultuous Rockies was the ragged vanguard of empire blazing a path through the wilderness, voyageur and burnt-wood runner, trapper, and explorer, pushing across the hinterlands of earth's ends from prairie to mountains, and mountains to sea.