290 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [ Vot. rie 
“ 
absorbs every other nobler sentiment. Every man appears absorbed in one considera- 
tion—-the worthier, how he shall fight ; the more sordid, how he shall run. é 
Poor amiable kind-hearted Weir, by whose side I sat at dinner hardly ten days since ! 
His fate demands a hecatomb and it will be sternly exacted. Eight companies 
marched yesterday for St. Denis from Sorel, the Light Company of the 32nd 
(Markham’s and Weir’s) among them; the men are awfully savage. I doubt if a 
trace of that murderous den will be left. So much for civil war. Woe be to those 
who have brought its horrors upon this hitherto peaceful land. 
“Simultaneously with the departure of this detachment returned Col. Wetherell and 
his Royals with their two guns and thirty prisoners. They were received by an 
immense concourse of people and with the greatest enthusiasm. They brought with 
them the standard of revolt—a pole surmounted by a donnet rouge with a gilt tassel 
and surrounded with a humble imitation of the Roman fasces. Ovide Perrault, of 
Montreal, Advocate, is the only man of note known to have fallen. At St. Charles 
about one hundred were slain—more may have fallen and their bodies have been 
burned in the houses which were destroyed. 
“This District is ina lamentable state. The County of Two Mountains is quite in 
4 state of insurrection. Hitherto these gallant patriots have done nothing but menace 
and expel the old country people from amcng them at the point of the bayonet. We 
have numbers flocking into town for protection who have been despoiled of their cattle 
and other moveables, and wantonly driven from their humble yet happy homes to beg 
their winter’s bread in this city. Everything has been done and will be done for them 
that is practicable. A man at St. Johns, a loyal Canadian volunteer, was found in a 
field near that place yesterday with three musket balls through his body. He had 
been murdered by some of the St. Athanase Patriots. MM. Peltier and Cherrier, 
have been this day accommodated with apartments at the Queen’s expense on charges 
of High Treason. At Quebec as well as here the volunteers are very busy and I under- 
stand getting on admirably. The townships are also arming, and all the back English 
settlements to which munitions of war can be conveyed without interruption have been 
amply provided. I think before they have done the French leaders will find themselves 
in a hornet’s nest. The 43rd is on its way to Quebec by the Post Route. We expect 
daily to hear of their arrival and I suppose we shall have ten thousand men out in the 
spring, until when it will be strange indeed if we cannot keep the province.” 
A letter of December gth gives us interesting information concerning 
the aid which the rebels expected from the Americans, also concerning 
the vigorous measures adopted by the Government. 
“ Things here brighten up extemporaneously and people’s faces glisten proportion- 
ately, to be clouded fer contra on the following day. The worst intelligence we have 
is of the unnatural though not unaccountable sympathy which is getting up on the 
other side of the lines. This is an evil without immediate remedy among a people who 
may be doubly influenced to act against us—part from the most honourable feelings, 
but the plupart from mercenary motives. The rebel recruiters on the lines offer eight 
dollars per month as the wages of their treasonable iniquity and 200 acres of land 
when the war is over and the British banner expelled from the American soil by the 
“ triumphant generals of the Republic.” 
‘* But you want facts, not speculations. The first therefore is as cheering a one to 
us as it has proved ominous of the future fate of similar Yankee enterprises. A party 
Se oe 
