Weir
has, however, sufficiently raised the choler of the troops, without any
further enormities on the part of the insurgents being requisite to that
end: when an English soldier swears to shew no mercy, he generally keeps
his word. Of all wars, a civil war is the most cruel, the most
unrelenting, and the most exterminating; and deep indeed must be the
responsibility of those, who, by their words or their actions, have
contrived to set countryman against countryman, neighbour against
neighbour, and very often brother against brother, and father against
child.

On the morning of the -- the ice on the branch of the Ottawa river,
which we had to cross, being considered sufficiently strong to bear the
weight of the artillery, the whole force marched out, under the command
of Sir John Colborne in person, to reduce the insurgents, who had
fortified themselves at St Eustache and St Benoit, two towns of some
magnitude in the district of Bois Brule. The snow, as I before
observed, lay very deep; but by the time we started, the road had been
well beaten down by the multitudes which had preceded us.

The effect of the whole line of troops, in their fur caps and
great-coats, with the trains of artillery, ammunition, and
baggage-waggons, as they wound along the snow-white road, was very
beautiful. It is astonishing how much more numerous the force, and how
much larger the men and horses appeared to be, from the strong contrast
of their colours with the wide expanse of snow.

As we passed one of the branches of the Ottawa, one of the
ammunition-waggons falling through the ice, the horses were immediately
all but choaked by the drivers--a precaution which was novel to me, and
a singular method of saving their lives: but such was the case: the air
within them, rarified by heat, inflated their bodies like balloons, and
they floated high on the water. In this state they were easily
disengaged from their traces, and hauled out upon the ice; the cords
which had nearly strangled them were then removed, and, in a few
minutes, they recovered sufficiently to be led to the shore.

Let it not be supposed that I am about to write a regular dispatch. I
went out with the troops, but was of about as much use as the fifth
wheel of a coach; with the exception, that as I rode one of Sir John
Colborne's horses, I was, perhaps, so far supplying the place of a groom
who was better employed.

The town of St Eustache is very prettily situated on