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This was true; but it was equally true of the other tribes, whose chiefs had made the necessary gifts, and recovered the captive Iroquois. Joncaire and his colleagues succeeded, however, in leading a large deputation of chiefs and elders to Montreal.
The whole West was astir, ready to pour itself again in blood and fire against the English border; and even the Cherokees and Choctaws, old friends of the British colonies, seemed on the point of turning against them. The Five Nations were half won for France. In November a large deputation of them came to renew the chain of friendship at Montreal.
All else is gone. And what wrought the change a few words will suffice to tell. Some travelling fur merchants brought the news to Donald Maxwell that a party of Highlanders had made a settlement above Montreal, and among them were some of his kindred.
General Amherst ordered some pieces of artillery to be brought up immediately from the landing-place at La Chine, where he had left some regiments for the security of the boats, and determined to commence the siege in form; but in the morning of the seventh he received a letter from the marquis de Vaudreuil by two officers, demanding a capitulation; which, after some letters had passed between the two generals, was granted upon as favourable terms as the French had reason to expect, considering that general Murray, with the troops from Quebec, had by this time landed on the island; and colonel Haviland, with the body under his command, had just arrived on the south side of the river, opposite to Montreal; circumstances equally favourable and surprising, if we reflect upon the different routes they pursued, through an enemy's country, where they had no intelligence of the motions of each other.
Even this explanation, however, scarcely lessens our wonder that they should have known so little of courses and distances; for had this river been as short as it is here delineated, they would have been within four hundred miles of Montreal.
In the provinces of Canada there were, in 1812, only four thousand five hundred regular troops, and of these hardly one-third were stationed above Montreal. The Canadian militia, however, rallied with extraordinary readiness to the call of the authorities.
The similarity of their fates, however, attracted Adrian strongly towards his host; and the two Knights conversed together with more friendship and unreserve than they had hitherto done. At length Montreal said, "By the way, I have not inquired your destination." "I am bound to Rome," said Adrian; "and the intelligence I have learned from you incites me thitherward yet more eagerly.
One obstreperous North-Wester was sent to the Columbia; another to the Montreal department, where "their able services could not be dispensed with;" and thus in the course of a few years he got rid of all those refractory spirits who dared to tell him their minds. The North-West nonconformists being in this manner disposed of, Sir George deemed it no longer necessary to wear the mask.
At Montreal there was no human life, save during a brief space in early summer, when the shore swarmed with savages, who had come to the yearly trade from the great communities of the interior. To-day there were dances, songs, and feastings; to-morrow all again was solitude, and the Ottawa was covered with the canoes of the returning warriors.
Passengers go from Montreal to Kingston by the mail route in twenty-four hours, a distance of 180 miles; a small portion, between the Cascades Rapids and the Coteau being traversed in a coach, on a planked road as smooth as a billiard-table.
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