It is also assumed that every Canadian is familiar with Canadian history, and that some one or other of its masters is well fixed in school memories. To those masters, and to many others, an apology is tendered for wholesale appropriation of their matter. If every statement made herein were substantiated by the customary foot-note many unsightly pages would be the result; therefore, as no statement has been made without due authority, we commend our readers to the writings of Parkman, Garneau, Dent, McMullen, McCarthy, Macaulay, Michelet, DeGaspé, LeMoine, David, Morgan, Carrier, Bonnycastle, F. B. Head, George Head, Macgregor, Bender, Lindsay, Rattray, Scadding, Thompson and others; to the writings and biographies of the statesmen and governors quoted; to Governmental Journals and House of Commons Debates; for the record of events as they daily took place to innumerable manuscripts, pamphlets and newspapers, written or published between Sarnia and Quebec and in many American cities, covering in particular the years ’36, ’37, ’38, ’39, ’40; and to various sources where Canada is treated as a side issue and not as a main point. Theller and McLeod have been used where the corroborative testimony of others warrants a transcription of their humours. “Whether an eagle or ant in the intellectual world seems to me not to matter much,” says Joubert. The work of the humble ant is to gather fragments, and, as the humblest in the tribe, the collectors of the data from which this mélange has risen offer it to the public, and as humbly hope they have come within the same writer’s further observation: “A small talent, if it keeps within its limits and rightly fulfils its task, may reach the goal just as well as a great one.” STRATFORD, October, 1897. Several score of authorities, known or comparatively unknown, have been drawn on in the compilation of Gallows Hill. Bill Johnston and Colonel Prince, as they appear here, are derived from twenty-one and twenty-six authorities respectively. Therefore when the hundredth, and the twenty-second, and the twenty-seventh, shall arise to contradict, or disagree with, each and every word herein, the authors beg to be allowed to see nothing but a humour in the situation. NEW WORDS TO AN OLD SONG; OR, JOHN GILPIN TRAVESTIED. [We are indebted to Miss FitzGibbon for a copy of the Cobourg _Star_ of February 7th, 1838, in which appears, under the above title, an epitome, from one point of view, of Rebellion events. Its humours make it a fitting introduction for the papers which follow.] “_Now puny discord first broke out, And fools rebelled; but what about They could not tell._” There lived in famed Toronto town A man not very big, A belted knight was he likewise,-- Knight of the old bay wig. Mackenzie was this hero called, From Scotia’s land he came, To sow and reap--if e’er he could-- The seeds of future fame.