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But he was now a timid old man, and perhaps did not care to prolong his reign by massacre of his people. He preferred dethronement and exile rather than see his capital deluged in blood. Nor did he know whom to trust. Treachery and treason finished what selfishness and hypocrisy had begun. Still, it is wonderful that he preserved his power for eighteen years.
Formerly the government of Upper Canada was deluged with petitions for grants of money from Parliament to be expended in improvements in this or that locality, of the reasonableness of which claims the majority of the legislators were, of course, profoundly ignorant.
Pulleys and tackling were put over the hatches, and passengers and crew together proceeded to haul up the heavy bales which had been deluged so frequently by water that the cotton was all but spoiled. One by one the sodden bales were placed in the boat to be transported to the reef.
The upper class had lost its power and its responsibility; it insisted the more tenaciously on its privileges. Exemption from certain taxes was the chief of these, but there were others as irritating if less important. Quarrels arose with the priest about the lord's right to be first given the holy water. One vicar in his wrath deluged his lordship's new wig.
Any one who has visited the Cape Colony will understand me when I say that these immense crops resemble sown grasses more than the tufty vegetation of the south. I would here request the particular attention of the reader to the phenomena these periodically deluged plains present, because they have a most important bearing on the physical geography of a very large portion of this country.
They caused the ship's armorer to make an iron brand, bearing the word "Heretic", and this being heated red, they came down to us and branded us on back and breast, so that all men, they said, should know us for what we were. And after that they gave us more lashes, and then deluged us with salt water, and so left us more dead than alive.
But however interesting such a scene might be, I could not wait to witness it, for the sun and the sea so dazzled my eyes in that direction, that I could but afford one glance; and then I turned again to delight myself with the sight and the sound of the sea, dashing against my promontory with no prodigious force, for the swell was broken by the tangled sea-weed and the unseen rocks beneath; otherwise I should soon have been deluged with spray.
"And meanwhile you've kept me reminded of you by these wonderful flowers," he said with a nod toward the ranks on ranks of roses which crowded table and window sills. "Oh, but not all those!" she denied. "I might have known you would be deluged with them. Daisies and buttercups out of the fields would have been better." "No, because those you sent look like you.
Despite the gathering darkness, he had been seen by a dozen eager watchers and was deluged with questions by trembling, tearful women and by grave, anxious men. "There's been a fight; that's all I know," he said. "I was with the pack mules and the ambulances and didn't get to see it. All I saw was dead ponies way out beyond Ten Mile Ridge. Where's the major? I mean the captain?"
But at that time the European nations who held possessions on the Pacific coast were very suspicious of the Americans, and possibly President Jefferson did not like to risk rousing their animosity. The rain that now deluged the unhappy campers was so incessant that they might well have thought that people should be web-footed to live in such a watery region.