Part 10 (1/2)
CHAPTER III.--MS. material preserved at Murray Bay.
CHAPTER IV.--Much original material relating to the Siege of Quebec in 1775-76 has been published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. To be specially noted are the two volumes of doc.u.ments on the ”Blockade of Quebec in 1775-76 by the American Revolutionists, (Les Bostonnais)” Edited by F.C. Wurtele (Quebec, 1905 and 1906). Two or three works have been written recently on the episode from the American point of view: Codman, ”Arnold's Expedition to Quebec”
(New York, 1901); Justin H. Smith, ”Arnold's March from Cambridge to Quebec, a critical study, together with a reprint of Arnold's Journal,”
(New York, 1903); Justin H. Smith, ”Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony,” 2 Vols. (New York, 1907). The story of Nairne's part in the war is based chiefly upon MS. material preserved at Murray Bay. The incident of the escaped prisoners is told in Nairne's reports; to Captain Matthews, Secretary to Haldimand, on the 14th of May, 1780, and to Major Le Maistre, on the 5th of June. These are at Murray Bay. A further report to Matthews on the 3rd of June is preserved at Ottawa; Canadian Archives, Series B, Vol. 73, p. 130. Mr. James Thompson was in charge of the building of the houses for the prisoners and tells of their escape in his MS. Diary.
CHAPTER V. and CHAPTER VI. are based upon MSS. at Murray Bay.
CHAPTER VII.--M. Leon Gerin has given an exhaustive a.n.a.lysis of the life of the habitant in ”L'Habitant de Saint Justin,” published in the Proc. and Trans, of the Royal Society of Canada for 1898 (Ottawa, 1898). M. J.-E. Roy's ”Histoire de la Seigneurie de Lauzon,” of which five volumes have been published (the last, Levis, Quebec, 1904) is the most detailed and authoritative account of a Canadian Seigniory. Vol. IV deals especially with the life of the habitants. Philippe Aubert de Gaspe's ”Les anciens Canadiens,” (Quebec, 1863), and his ”Memoires”
(Ottawa, 1866), contain much that is interesting on the life of a Canadian manor. So also do H.R. Casgrain's ”Une Paroisse Canadienne au XVIIe Siecle,” Oeuvres Completes, Vol. I (Montreal, 1884), and Parkman's ”The Old Regime in Canada,” (Boston, 1893). W. Bennett Munro's ”The Seigniorial System in Canada,” (New York, 1907), and his ”Doc.u.ments relating to Seigniorial Tenure in Canada,” (Toronto, 1908), cover adequately the whole subject, and contain, in addition, abundant references to further authorities. The ”Mandements des Eveques de Quebec,” (Ed. Tetu and Gagnon), in six volumes, the first published in 1887, contain much of interest in regard to the att.i.tude of the Church to the people. The Second Part of ”The Report of the Commission charged with revising and consolidating the General Statutes of the Province of Quebec,” (Quebec, 1907), outlines the legal aspects of the school and Church systems. M. Andre Seigfried's ”Le Canada, Les Deux Races,”
(Paris, 1906), translated into English under the t.i.tle of ”The Race Question in Canada,” (London, 1907), is a pa.s.sionless a.n.a.lysis of religious and political thought in the Province of Quebec.
CHAPTER VIII.--The account of fis.h.i.+ng at Murray Bay in 1830 is by Walter Henry; ”Events of a Military Life,” 2 Vols. (London, 1843).
The chapter is based chiefly upon personal observation.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A (p. 31)
THE JOURNAL OF MALCOM FRASER, FIRST SEIGNEUR OF MOUNT MURRAY, MALBAIE
Malcolm Fraser was a young man of about twenty-six when he kept his diary of Wolfe's campaign against Quebec. It shows that already he had considerable powers of observation and very definite opinions. No doubt Fraser preserved a record of events in the campaign earlier than those of 1759; and it seems likely that the habit of recording his experiences would also have been kept up in later life. When, some time before 1860, were made the extracts from Fraser's Journal upon which the present notes are based, the original remained in the possession of his son the Hon. John Malcolm Fraser. The extracts were published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec in 1868 and have been used by Parkman and other historians, who usually, however, confuse Fraser with his commanding officer Colonel Simon Fraser. The extracts have long been out of print. I have not been able to trace the original MS. or any other Journal of Fraser, except a brief and quite valueless one preserved at Mount Murray. In one of his later letters, written fifty years after this Journal, Fraser speaks of his reluctance to handle the pen. But this did not keep him from writing in a beautiful round hand many long letters and making also copies for his own use.
Early in the spring of 1859 a great British fleet had arrived in America from England and a squadron under Admiral Holmes had gone to New York to embark the Highlanders and other regiments wintering there to proceed to Quebec. The place of rendezvous was Louisbourg. Fraser's Journal begins on May 8th, 1759, with the departure of the regiments from Sandy Hook, the fleet consisting of about twenty-eight sail. The Highlanders had taken part in the siege and capture of Louisbourg in the previous year but had gone to New York for the winter. On May 17th the fleet sailed into Louisbourg Harbour after ”a very agreeable and quick pa.s.sage” of nine days. Patches of snow lay still on the ground and on the 29th of May Louisbourg Harbour was so full of ice that boats could not pa.s.s from the s.h.i.+ps to sh.o.r.e. ”I suppose,” says Fraser, ”the ice comes from the Gulf and river of St. Lawrence,” regions he was in time to be very familiar with. He hears that a Lieutenant has shot himself on one of the men of war ”for fear I suppose the French should do it. If he was wearied of life, he might soon get out of it in a more honourable way.”
On Monday, June 4th, after much bustle of preparation, the fleet set sail for Quebec. ”I take it to consist of about 150 sail,” says Fraser; so great was the array that to count the s.h.i.+ps was almost impossible.
They numbered in fact nearly 300, a huge force. On June 13th the fleet anch.o.r.ed at Bic in the St. Lawrence River. As they came up the river Fraser noted that the north sh.o.r.e was but little inhabited, a defect which, within a few years, he was himself to try to remedy in part. On June 23rd a whole division of the fleet anch.o.r.ed near Isle aux Coudres as Jacques Cartier had done more than two hundred years earlier.
Arrived before Quebec the Highlanders were sent to Point Levi where, on July 1st, they pitched their tents. The next day Fraser's company established itself in the Church of St. Joseph there. The Canadians were carrying on guerilla warfare, firing on the British from the woods and Fraser was shocked at the horrid practise of scalping. He writes on July 2nd:
”While we were out, I observed several dead bodies on the road, not far from our Camp; they were all scalped and mangled in a shocking manner. I dare say no human creature but an Indian or Canadian could be guilty of such inhumanity as to insult a dead body.”
He was to see worse atrocities committed on his own side. On July 10th, still at Point Levi, he writes of the doings of a company of the colonial scouting force, the Rangers, commanded by Captain Gorham, who soon after desolated Malbaie.
”A party of our Rangers having been sent out on this side of the river (the south), on the 9th they took one man prisoner and two boys (his children) having followed him a little way, making a great noise, were in a most inhuman manner murdered by those worse than savage Rangers, for fear, as they pretend, they should be discovered by the noise of the children. I wish this story was not fact, but I'm afraid there is little reason to doubt it:--the wretches having boasted of it on their return, tho' they now pretend to vindicate themselves by the necessity they were under; but, I believe, this barbarous action proceeded from that cowardice and barbarity which seems so natural to a native of America, whether of Indian or European extraction. In other instances, those Rangers have hitherto been of some use, and showed in general a better spirit than usual. They are for the most part raised in New England.”
On Friday, July 13th, the scene changed. Wolfe was planning an attack on Montcalm's camp and Fraser writes: ”I was sent orderly officer to the Camp, at Montmorency, where I had an opportunity of seeing our own, and the French posts nigh the Fall. The river is fordable below the Fall at low water.” On July 24th, 350 of the Highlanders under Col. Simon Fraser were sent down the river to bring in prisoners and cattle. The Highland leader met with misfortune. On July 26th Fraser writes: ”Lieut.
Alexander Fraser, Junior, returned to camp from the detachment which marched with the Col. on the 24th. He brings news of the Colonel's having been wounded in the thigh, by an unlucky shot from a small party of Canadians who lay in ambush and fired on the detachment out of a bush, and then retired. In the evening, the Col. came to camp with Capt.
McPherson, who was wounded by the same shot, and the ball lodged in his thigh; but it is thought neither of their wounds are (_sic_) dangerous.
There was not another man of the detachment touched.” Next day the rest of the detachment ”returned with three women and one man prisoners, and above two hundred head of cattle.”
On the following night July 28th, the French tried to destroy the British fleet by a fire s.h.i.+p. ”This night the French sent down a large fire raft which they did not set fire to till they were fired on by some of the boats who are every night on the watch for them above the s.h.i.+pping. Our boats immediately grappled it, and tho' it burnt with great violence, they towed it past all the s.h.i.+pping without any damage.”
We know from other sources that one of the sailors engaged in dragging away the fires.h.i.+p likened it to having ”h.e.l.l-fire in tow.”
Fraser records on Tuesday, July 31st, the disastrous attempt by the British to carry by a frontal attack Montcalm's entrenchments along the Beauport sh.o.r.e. The attack failed partly through the rashness of the Grenadiers who dashed forward prematurely. For this Wolfe rebuked them but he commended the cool steadiness of the Highlanders. Some 700 British casualties were the results of the attack. When the British drew off they left many of their men fallen on the sh.o.r.e. Fraser says: ”I observed some men coming down from the trenches where some of our people lay killed; we imagined they were Indians who were sent to scalp them, after the whole had retreated.”
At once after the disaster, the Highlanders were moved back to their old camp at Point Levi. Some idle days followed. But, on August 15th, a detachment which included Fraser was sent to the Island of Orleans. It was bent on the work of desolating the Canadian parishes, the people of which still persisted in warring on the British. On Thursday, August 16th, the detachment, consisting of about 170 officers and men, marched the length of the Island of Orleans and on the 17th it crossed to St.