A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs: The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861Wrong, George McKinnon
History
A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs: The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861
Wrong, George McKinnon
La Malbaie (Québec); Nairne family; Nairne, John, -1802
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
passage" 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 pass from the ships to shore. "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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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