Part 13

I recollect a man standing behind the breastwork where were four of us sitting as the balls were whistling through the trees. "Well," says he, "if this is the way to kill the timber on this island, it certainly is a very expensive way as well as somewhat comical; I should think it would be cheaper to come over with axes, and if they are not in too big a hurry, girdle the trees and they will die the sooner." I remarked: "They did not know how to use an axe, but understood girdling in a different way." An old gentleman from Canada taking the hint quickly responded, "Yes. Canada can testify to the fact of their having other ways of girdling besides with the axe, and unless there is a speedy stop put to it, there will not be a green tree left." There was another gentleman about to say something of their manner of swindling in other parts of the world, he had just commenced about Ireland when I felt a sudden jar at my back, and the other three that set near me did the same; we rose up and discovered that a cannon ball had found its way through our breastwork, but was kind enough to stop after just stirring the dirt at our backs. I had only moved about an inch of dirt when I picked up a six-pound ball.

As it happened, our gun was a six-pounder. We concluded, as that was the only ball that had as yet been willing to pay us a visit, we would send it back as quick as it come. We immediately put it into our gun and wheeled around the corner of the breastwork. "Hold," said I, "there is Queen Ann's Pocket Piece, as it is called, it will soon be opposite, and then we'll show them what we can do." It was not mounted, but swung under the ex [axle] of a cart, such as are used for drawing saw-logs, with very large wheels. I had seen it previous to my leaving Chippewa. I think there was six horses attached to the cart, for it was very heavy, it being a twenty-four-pounder. I suppose it was their intention to split the Island in two with it, hoping by so doing it might loosen at the roots and move off with the current and go over the falls, and thus accomplish their great work of destruction at once. As they were opposite, the words "ready, fire," were given; we had the satisfaction of seeing the horses leave the battleground with all possible speed. The gun was forsaken in no time, and in less than five minutes there was scarcely a man to be seen. The ball had gone about three feet further to the left than had been intended; it was intended to lop the wheels, but it severed the tongue from the ex and the horses took the liberty to move off as fast as possible.

We were about to give them another shot, when the officer of the day came up and told us the orders from headquarters were not to fire unless it was absolutely necessary, that we must be saving of our ammunition. I told him that it was their own ball that we had just sent back. When he saw the execution it had done he smiled and went on, remarking, "They begin to fire a little lower." "Yes," said I, "and as that was the first, we thought we would send it back and let them know we did not want it, that we had balls of our own."

This incident was the beginning of more active operations. For the next nine days and nights there was a great deal of firing, with one killed and three wounded. The Patriot army held on to its absurd stronghold for four weeks, causing, as Marsh quaintly puts it, "much noise and confusion on both sides"; and he at least was keenly disappointed when it was evacuated, Jan. 12, 1838. The handful of Patriots scattered and Chippewa composed herself to the repose which, but for one ripple of disturbance in 1866, continues to the present day.

Up to the end of this abortive campaign Robert Marsh's chief misadventure had been to cut himself off, practically, from a safe return to the community where his best interests lay. But he had a stout heart if a perverse head. "I was born of Patriot parentage," he boasted; "I am not a Patriot today and tomorrow the reverse"; and being fairly identified with the rebels, he determined to woo the fortunes of war wherever opportunity offered. His ardor must have been considerable, for he made his way in the dead of winter from Buffalo to Detroit; just how I do not know; but he speaks of arriving at Sandusky "after a tedious walk of five days." Here he joined a party for an attack on Malden, but the Patriots were themselves attacked by some 300 Canadian troops who came across the lake in sleighs; there was a lively fight on the ice, with some loss of life, when each party was glad to retire. Next he tried it with a band of rebels on Fighting Island, below Detroit; treachery and "the power of British gold" seem to have kept Canada from falling into their hands; and presently, "being sick of island fighting," as he puts it, he made his way to Detroit, where, all through that troubled summer of '38, he appears to have been one of the most active and ardent of the plotters. Certain it is that he was promptly to the front for the battle of Windsor, and was with the invaders on Dec. 4, 1838, when a band of 164 misguided men crossed the Detroit River to take Canada. He was "Lieutenant" Marsh on this expedition, but it was the emptiest of honors. At four in the morning they attacked the barracks on the river banks above Windsor, and, as often happens with the most fatuous enterprises, met at the outset with success. They burned the barracks and took thirty-eight prisoners (whom they could not hold), looking meanwhile across the river for help which never came. "We were about planting our standard," wrote Marsh afterward; "the flag was a splendid one, with two stars for Upper and Lower Canada. We had just succeeded in getting a long spar and was in the act of raising it, as the cry was heard,--'There comes the Red-coats! There are the dragoons!'" Our Patriot, it will be observed, made no nice distinctions between British and Canadian troops; that distinction will not fail to be made for him, in a province which has always claimed the honor--to which it is fully entitled--of putting down this troublesome uprising without having to call for help upon the British regulars. But the invaders did not raise nice points then. They hastily formed and withstood the attack for a little; but it was a hopeless stand, for numbers and discipline were all on the other side. According to Marsh, the regulars numbered 600. There was sharp firing, eleven Patriots and forty-four Canadians were killed; and seeing this, and learning, later than his friends across the river, that discretion is the better part of valor, he did the only thing that remained to do--he took to the woods.

The woods were full just then of discreet Patriots, and several of them held a breathless council of war. Here is Marsh's account of it:

It was finally concluded for every man to do the best he could for himself. We accordingly separated and I found myself pursued by a man hollowing at the top of his voice, "Stop there, stop, you damned rebel, or I'll shoot you! stop, stop!" I was near a fence at that time crossing a field. I proceeded to the fence, dropped on one knee, put my rifle through the fence, took deliberate aim. He had a gun and was gaining on me. I had a cannister of powder, pouch of balls, two pistols and an overcoat on, which prevented me from attempting to run. I saw all hopes of escape was useless; I discharged my rifle, but cannot say whether it hit the mark or not, for I did not look, but immediately rose and walked off. At any rate I heard no more "Stop there, you damned rebel."

Marsh's narrative is too diffuse, not to mention other faults, for me to follow it _verbatim et (il-)literatim_. I give the events of the next few days as simply as possible. After he fired his gun through the fence at the red-coat who followed no more--his last shot, be it remarked, for the relief of Canada--he found that he was very tired. It was late in the day of the battle and he had eaten nothing for nearly forty-eight hours. Pushing on through the woods he came to a barn, but had scarcely entered when it was surrounded by ten or twelve "dragoons," as he calls them. He scrambled up a ladder to the hay-mow, dug a hole in the hay, crawled in and smoothed it over himself, and, he says, "had just got a pistol in each hand as the door flew open; in they rushed, crying, 'Come out, you damned rebel, we'll shoot you, we'll not take you before the Colonel to be shot, come out, come out, we'll hang you.' Said another, 'We'll quarter you and feed you to the hogs as we've just served one!' They thrust their swords into the hay, and threatened to burn the barn; but as it belonged to one of their sort, they thought better of it and went off. They soon came back, and saying they would place a sentry, disappeared again." Marsh tore up certain papers which he feared would be troublesome if found on him and then slept. It was dark when he awoke. He crept out of the barn and wandered through the woods until daylight, narrowly escaping some Indians. He applied at the house of a French settler for something to eat; frankly admitting, what it obviously was folly to deny, that he was a fugitive. Three "large bony Frenchmen" came to the door, made him their prisoner and marched him off through the woods to Sandwich, where he was stripped of his valuables and locked up with several others, his captors cheerfully assuring them that they would have a fine shooting-match tomorrow. Marsh stoutly maintained that, as he owed the Queen no allegiance, he was not a rebel; but his protests did him no good. He was not shot on the morrow, although others of the captives were summarily executed, without a pretext of trial or even a chance to say their prayers.

And now begins an imprisonment of ten months full of such distress and atrocity that I should not please, however much I might edify, by its recital. We read today of the horrors of Spanish and Turkish massacres or of Siberian prisons, and every page of history has its record of inhumanity--its Black Hole, its Dartmoor, its Andersonville. In this dishonor roll of official outrages surely may be included the backwoods prisons of Upper Canada in 1838 and '39. Our misadventurer was shifted from one to another. At Fort Malden, on the shore of Lake Erie, he was kept for seven weeks in a small room with twenty-eight other men. It was the dead of winter, but they had no warmth save from their emaciated and vermin-infested bodies. They were ironed two and two, day and night. They were so crowded that there was not floor-room for all to sleep at once. According to Marsh, who afterwards wrote a minute record of this imprisonment, their feeding and care would have been fatal to a herd of hogs. The acme of the miseries of the prison at Fort Malden I cannot even hint at with propriety. When transferred from Sandwich to Malden, and later from Malden to London, Marsh, like many of his fellow sufferers, had his feet frozen; and when his limbs swelled so that life itself was threatened, it was not the surgeon but a clumsy blacksmith who cut off the irons and supplied new ones.

In London the treatment of Malden was repeated. Here the trials began. The gallows was erected close to the jail wall; day by day the doomed ones walked out of a door in the second story to the death platform; and day by day Marsh and the other wretches in the cells heard the drop as it swung, in falling, against the jail wall. Marsh lived in hourly expectation of the summons, but before his turn came there was a stay in the work which had been going on under the warrants signed by Sir George Arthur--as great a tyrant, probably, as ever held power on the American continent. A far more philosophic writer than Robert Marsh has called him the Robespierre of Canada. Whatever may be held as to the illegality of the trials which sent some twenty-five men to the gallows at this time, certain it is that the hangings stopped before our hero's neck was stretched. Fate still had her quiver full of evil days for him; and fortune, like a gleam of sun between clouds, moved him on to the prison at Toronto, where his mother came to see him.

It was in the early spring of 1839 that he was transferred to Toronto. In June following, with a boatload of companions, he was shipped down to Fort Henry at Kingston. Here, for three months, he was deluded with the constant expectation of release; but he must have had some foreshadowings of his fate when, after three months of wretched existence at Fort Henry, he was again sent on, down the river to Quebec; and there, on September 28, 1839, he and 137 companions in irons were put aboard the British prison-ship Buffalo, commanded by Capt. Wood. They were stowed on the third deck, below the water line; 140 sailors were placed over them; and the Buffalo took her course down the widening gulf. The dismal departure was lightened by a touch of human nature. There were several of the convicts who, like Marsh, claimed American citizenship, and American blood will show itself.[49] As the prisoners were marched down with clanking chains from Fort Henry for the shipment to Quebec, many of them thought that it was their last shift before release. "There were three or four very good singers amongst us," says Marsh, "which made the fort ring with the 'American Star,' 'Hunters of Kentucky' and other similar songs, which caused many to flock to our windows. Some of them remarked, 'You will not feel like singing in Botany Bay.' 'Give us "Botany Bay,"' said one, and it was done in good style."

If the reader will permit the digression, it may afford a little entertainment to consider for a moment these old songs. The literature of every war includes its patriotic songs--seldom the work of great poets, and most popular when they appeal to the quick sympathies and sense of humor of the common people. Every people has such songs, sometimes cherished and sung for generations. England has them without number, Canada has hers, the United States has hers; and among the most popular for many years, strange as it now may seem, were "The American Star" and "The Hunters of Kentucky," which were sung by these none-too-worthy representatives of the United States, through Canadian prison bars, this autumn morning sixty years ago. Both songs had their origin, I believe, at the time of the War of 1812. That such barren and bombastic lines as "The American Star" should have remained popular a quarter of a century seems incredible, and appears to indicate that the youth of the country were very hard up for patriotic songs worth singing. Here follows "The American Star":

Come, strike the bold anthem, the war dogs are howling, Already they eagerly snuff up their prey, The red clouds of war o'er our forests are scowling, Soft peace spreads her wings and flies weeping away; The infants, affrighted, cling close to their mothers, The youths grasp their swords, for the combat prepare, While beauty weeps fathers, and lovers and brothers, Who rush to display the American Star.

Come blow the shrill bugle, the loud drum awaken, The dread rifle seize, let the cannon deep roar; No heart with pale fear, or faint doubtings be shaken, No slave's hostile foot leave a print on our shore. Shall mothers, wives, daughters and sisters left weeping, Insulted by ruffians, be dragged to despair! Oh no! from her hills the proud eagle comes sweeping And waves to the brave the American Star.

The spirits of Washington, Warren, Montgomery, Look down from the clouds with bright aspect serene; Come, soldiers, a tear and a toast to their memory, Rejoicing they'll see us as they once have been. To us the high boon by the gods has been granted, To speed the glad tidings of liberty far; Let millions invade us, we'll meet them undaunted, And vanquish them by the American Star.

Your hands, then, dear comrades, round Liberty's altar, United we swear by the souls of the brave Not one from the strong resolution shall falter, To live independent, or sink to the grave! Then, freemen, fill up--Lo, the striped banner's flying, The high bird of liberty screams through the air; Beneath her oppression and tyranny dying-- Success to the beaming American Star.

Every one of its turgid and wordy lines bespeaks the struggling infancy of a National literature. "The Hunters of Kentucky" is a little better, because it has humor--though of the primitive backwoods type--in it. If the reader has not heard it lately, perhaps he can stand a little of it. It was inspired by the battle of New Orleans:

Ye gentlemen and ladies fair, Who grace this famous city, Just listen, if you've time to spare, While I rehearse a ditty; And for the opportunity Conceive yourselves quite lucky, For 'tis not often that you see A hunter from Kentucky; O! Kentucky, The hunters of Kentucky.

We are a hardy free-born race, Each man to fear a stranger; Whate'er the game, we join in chase, Despising toil and danger; And if a daring foe annoys, Whate'er his strength or force is, We'll show him that Kentucky boys Are alligators,--horses: O! Kentucky, etc.

I s'pose you've read it in the prints, How Packenham attempted To make Old Hickory Jackson wince, But soon his schemes repented; For we, with rifles ready cock'd, Thought such occasion lucky, And soon around the general flock'd The hunters of Kentucky: O! Kentucky, etc.

I s'pose you've heard how New Orleans Is famed for wealth and beauty; There's gals of every hue, it seems, From snowy white to sooty: So, Packenham he made his brags If he in fight was lucky, He'd have their gals and cotton bags, In spite of Old Kentucky: O! Kentucky, etc.

But Jackson he was wide awake, And wasn't scared at trifles, For well he knew what aim we take With our Kentucky rifles; So, he led us down to Cypress Swamp, The ground was low and mucky; There stood John Bull in martial pomp-- But here was Old Kentucky: O! Kentucky, etc.

We raised a bank to hide our breasts, Not that we thought of dying, But then we always like to rest, Unless the game is flying; Behind it stood our little force-- None wish'd it to be greater, For every man was half a horse And half an alligator: O! Kentucky, etc.

They didn't let our patience tire Before they show'd their faces; We didn't choose to waste our fire, But snugly kept our places; And when so near we saw them wink, We thought it time to stop 'em, It would have done you good, I think, To see Kentuckians drop 'em: O! Kentucky, etc.

They found, at length, 'twas vain to fight, When lead was all their booty, And so, they wisely took to flight, And left us all the beauty. And now, if danger e'er annoys, Remember what our trade is; Just send for us Kentucky boys, And we'll protect you, ladies: O! Kentucky, etc.

At least it has a gallant ending, which was not altogether apposite to the situation of Marsh and his fellow-prisoners at Kingston. "Botany Bay" was more in their line just then; but, at any rate, it was just as philosophic to go into exile singing as mourning or cursing.

Were I a Herman Melville or a Clark Russell I should be tempted to dwell on this dreary voyage of the prison-ship Buffalo. Even Marsh's humble chronicle of it is graphic with unstudied incidents. They ran into rough weather at once; so that to the wretchedness of their imprisonment was added the misery of seasickness. No one had told them of their destination, and many of them, like Marsh, stoutly maintained from first to last that they were transported without a sentence. Their daily life in this dark and crowded 'tween-decks, practically the hold of a staggering old sailer, could not be detailed without offense; and if it could be, I have no desire to heap up the horrors. In mid-voyage there was an attempted mutiny; the convicts tried to seize the ship; but the only result was heavier irons, closer confinement, and a stricter guard. After two months of the stormy Atlantic the Buffalo put into Rio Janeiro, where she lay three tantalizing days. "It happened to be the Emperor's birthday," says Marsh, "and although we were not allowed to go on shore, we could discover through a skylight the flags on the pinnacles of houses and hills apparently reaching to the clouds." A little fruit was had aboard to allay the scurvy which was making havoc, and the Buffalo lumbered away again and ran straight into a savage gale, in which she sprung a bad leak. She was an old ship, and had formerly been a man-of-war, but for some years now had been employed as a convict transport between England and New South Wales. From Rio around the Cape of Good Hope the log kept by Robert Marsh is a story of sickness and death. Those who had had their limbs frozen in Canada now found the skin and flesh coming away and the sea water on their bare feet gave them excruciating agony. The shotted sack slid into the shark-patrolled waters of the Indian Ocean, and the wretches who still lived were envious of the dead. And on the 13th of February, 1840, four months and a half from Quebec, the Buffalo anchored in Hobart Town harbor, Van Dieman's Land.