CHAPTER VIII. AFFAIRS IN CANADA—CAPTURE OF FORT CHAMBLEE—SIEGE OF ST. JOHNS—MACLEAN AND HIS HIGHLANDERS—MONTGOMERY ON THE TREATMENT OF ETHAN ALLEN—REPULSE OF CARLETON—CAPITULATION OF THE GARRISON OF ST. JOHNS—GENEROUS CONDUCT OF MONTGOMERY—MACLEAN RE-EMBARKS FOR QUEBEC—WEARY STRUGGLE OF ARNOLD THROUGH THE WILDERNESS—DEFECTION OF COLONEL ENOS—ARNOLD IN THE VALLEY OF THE CHAUDIERE—HIS ARRIVAL OPPOSITE QUEBEC—SURRENDER OF MONTREAL—ESCAPE OF CARLETON—HOME SICKNESS OF THE AMERICAN TROOPS. Despatches from Schuyler dated October 26th, gave Washington another chapter of the Canada expedition. Chamblee, an inferior fort, within five miles of St. Johns, had been taken by Majors Brown and Livingston at the head of fifty Americans and three hundred Canadians. A large quantity of gunpowder and other military stores found there, was a seasonable supply to the army before St. Johns, and consoled General Montgomery for his disappointment in regard to the aid promised by Colonel Ethan Allen. He now pressed the siege of St. Johns with vigor. The garrison, cut off from supplies, were suffering from want of provisions; but the brave commander, Major Preston, still held out manfully, hoping speedy relief from General Carleton, who was assembling troops for that purpose at Montreal. Carleton, it is true, had but about one hundred regulars several hundred Canadians, and a number of Indians with him; but he calculated greatly on the co-operation of Colonel Maclean, a veteran Scot, brave and bitterly loyal, who had enlisted three hundred of his countrymen at Quebec, and formed them into a regiment called “The Royal Highland Emigrants.” This doughty Highlander was to land at the mouth of the Sorel, where it empties into the St. Lawrence, and proceed along the former river to St. Johns, to join Carleton, who would repair thither by the way of Longueil. In the mean time Montgomery received accounts from various quarters that Colonel Ethan Allen and his men, captured in the ill-advised attack upon Montreal, were treated with cruel and unnecessary severity, being loaded with irons; and that even the colonel himself was subjected to this “shocking indignity.” Montgomery addressed a letter to Carleton on the subject, strong and decided in its purport, but written in the spirit of a courteous and high-minded gentleman, and ending with an expression of that sad feeling which gallant officers must often have experienced in this revolutionary conflict, on being brought into collision with former brothers in arms.