Robert Gourlay, then at Cleveland, Ohio, wrote his opinion of the fatuity of this course direct to Van Rensselaer. Several of his letters are condensed into, “Never was hallucination more blinding than yours. At a moment of profound peace, putting on armour, and led by the little editor of a blackguard newspaper, entering the lists of civil broil, and erecting your standard on Navy Island to defy the armies of Britain! David before Goliath seemed little, but God was with him. What are you in the limbo of vanity, with no stay but the devil? Mr. Hume is a little man, and you less.” He adds, alluding to the famous letter, “That his four years of residence in the United States had let him see things far worse than European domination. You call yourself a patriot, and fly from home to enlist scoundrels for the conquest of your country. This is patriotism with a vengeance.” Mackenzie, like Gourlay, had a great aptitude in calculating the difficulties they were powerful enough to create. But neither of them, in his own case, counted on possible consequences. At the finish of his proclamation Mackenzie has a prophecy: “We were also among the deliverers of our country.” But he further says, “Militiamen of 1812, will ye rally round the standard of our tyrants? I can scarce believe it possible.” Already that standard was floating before his eyes from one of the tallest pines, and around it were gathered MacNab, Drew, and a host of others whose own arms or their fathers’ had been borne in 1812,--two thousand five hundred Canadian farmers, most of them delaying, when called, for nothing but the clothing in which they now stood. Bayonets glittered in the sun, and, on horseback as usual, Sir Francis trotted up and down, reviewing with pardonable pride the troops, white, red, and black, which had rallied round that flag. “Canadians, rally round your Head, Nor to these base insurgents yield,” had been the cry of a Tory paper. “I wonder how that rebel crew Could clap their wings and craw, man,” says another. But Sir Francis had one discomforting answer to his appeal for aid against Navy Island. Mr. Absalom Shade, of Galt, replied that not a few there declined to enter into any such frontier service; while many in the Paisley Block, though not allying themselves with Mackenzie, would have seen “Governor and Governor’s party drowned in the depths of the sea and not a solitary cry of regret for them.” But Sir Francis had his friends. (_Toast_): Sir Francis Bond Head--the noble champion of our rights--distinguished alike for every virtue which constitutes the gentleman and the scholar, whose name adorns a bright page in the History of Upper Canada. (_Tune_: “Britons Strike Home”). * * * * * Gallows Hill over, the Canadian muse took her lyre in hand and sang, with a Scotch accent forbye: