Thus all along their frontier shores, from Mackinac to far St. John, the Canadians stood shoulder to shoulder in one bold, united line, and held the larger half of North America for the British crown. Again, when Fenian hordes and restless soldiers, who had been disbanded from the armies of the American Civil War, were assembled and drilled under the protection of the United States, and launched in raids against Canadian homes, the Canadian volunteers mustered around their Union Jack, and along the Niagara frontier, in 1866, and at Eccles Hill, in the Province of Quebec, in 1870, again drove the southern invader back, and held their native soil inviolate beneath its three-crossed folds. "Since when has a Southerner placed his heel On the men of the northern zone? "Shall the mothers that bore us bow the head And blush for degenerate sons? Are the patriot fires gone out and dead? Ho! brothers, stand to the guns! Let the flag be nailed to the mast, Defying the coming blast! For Canada's sons are true as steel, Their metal is muscle and bone, The Southerner never shall place his heel On the men of the northern zone. "Oh, we are the men of the northern zone, Where the maples their branches toss; And the Great Bear rides in his state alone, Afar from the Southern Cross. Our people shall aye be free, They never shall bend the knee, For this is the land of the true and leal, Where freedom is bred in the bone-- The Southerner never shall place his heel On the men of the northern zone."[149] [149] Kernighan ("The Khan"): "The Men of the Northern Zone." Such was the British patriotism of which the flag was the Union signal, and now another parliamentary union is to be included in the career of the Union Jack in Canada.