These were the men who fought our battles in Egypt, Spain, and France! and here is a new page for Alfred de Vigny's "Servitude et Grandeur Militaire!" But do you not think it includes another lesson? That this amount of suffering, and injury, and injustice can be inflicted, from the errors, ignorance, and remoteness of the home government, and that the responsibility apparently rests nowhere--and that nowhere lies redress--seems to me a very strange, a very lamentable state of things, and what _ought_ not to be. [Footnote 57: I have these particulars from the chief of the commissariat in Upper Canada, and the emigrant agent.] [Footnote 58: One of these men, stone-blind, was begging in the streets of Toronto.] [Footnote 59: Now Lord Seaton.] * * * * * DRIVE OVER THE NARROWS. Our voyageurs had spent the day in various excesses, and next morning were still half tipsy, lazy, and out of spirits, except Le Duc; he was the only one I could persuade to sing, as we crossed Gloucester Bay from Penetanguishene to Coldwater. This bay abounds in sturgeon, which are caught and cured in large quantities by the neighbouring settlers; some weigh ninety and one hundred pounds. At Matchadash (which signifies "bad and swampy place") we had nearly lost our way among the reeds. There is a portage here of sixteen miles across the forest to the Narrows, at the head of Lake Simcoe. The canoe and baggage were laid on a cart, and drawn by oxen; the gentlemen walked, as I must also have done, if a Methodist preacher of the neighbourhood had not kindly brought his little waggon and driven me over the portage. We stopped about half-way at his log-hut in the wilderness, where I found his wife, a pretty, refined looking woman, and five or six lovely children, of all ages and sizes. They entertained me with their best, and particularly with delicious preserves, made of the wood-strawberries and raspberries, boiled with the maple sugar. The country here (after leaving the low swamps) is very rich, and the settlers fast increasing. During the last winter the bears had the audacity to carry off some heifers to the great consternation of the new settlers, and the wolves did much mischief. I inquired about the Indian settlements at Coldwater and the Narrows; but the accounts were not encouraging. I had been told, as a proof of the advancement of the Indians, that they had here saw-mills and grist-mills. I now learned that they had a saw-mill and a grist-mill built for them, which they never used themselves, but _let out_ to the white settlers at a certain rate. The road through the forest was bordered in many places by wild raspberry bushes, bearing fruit as fine, and large, and abundant as any I have seen in our gardens.