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.

It was but as a side clap of the great American Revolution that the
last French cannon were pointed against the English forts on Hudson
Bay. When France sided with the American colonies a fleet of French
frigates was dispatched under the great Admiral La Perouse against the
fur posts of the English Company. One sleepy August afternoon in 1782,
when Samuel Hearne, governor of Fort Churchill, was sorting furs in the
courtyard, gates wide open, cannon unloaded, guards dispersed, the fort
was electrified by the sudden apparition of three men-of-war, sails
full blown, sides bristling with cannon, plowing over the waves
straight for the harbor gate. French colors fluttered from the
masthead. Sails rattled down. Anchors were cast, and in a few minutes
small boats were out sounding the channel for position to attack the
fort. Hearne had barely forty men, and the most of them were
decrepits, unfit for the hunting field. As sunset merged into the long
white light of northern midnight, four hundred French mariners landed
on the sands outside Churchill. {319} Hearne had no alternative. He
surrendered without a blow. The fort was looted of furs, the Indians
driven out, and a futile attempt made to blow up the massive walls.
Hearne and the other officers were carried off captives. Matonabbee,
the famous Indian guide, came