56 HORSE, FOOT, AND DRAGOONS. 



children's voices from tlie school - house near the married sol- 

 diers' quarters of some regiment strikes our ears ; and in the 

 trim little gardens about the officers' houses a man is working 

 about the flower-beds. Passing the green lawns and well- 

 trimmed hedges of the officers' club grounds, we roll over the 

 bridge crossing the canal, catching a glimpse, as we do so, of 

 some boating man leisurely sculling over the smooth, glassy- 

 surface, or an occasional angler, his red jacket reflected in the 

 still water. Down in a pretty green valley, relieving pictu- 

 resquely against dark masses of trees, lies an infantry camp, 

 and on its edge some of the men are busy about the earthen 

 ovens preparing the noonday meal. Rows of camp-kettles, half- 

 hidden in little columns of blue smoke and the steam of 

 their savory contents, are boiling and sputtering, pans of meat 

 and potatoes are standing on the ground, ready to be placed 

 over the fire. Some of the men are chopping wood or attend- 

 ing to the fires, while the cooks, coatless, and with their shirt- 

 sleeves rolled above their elbows, are moving about in the 

 trenches around the ovens or bending over their tasks. 



As we turn a corner I catcli sight of a body of troops com- 

 ing towards us, their band playing an almost forgotten tune, 

 an air that I had often heard in my own country, and it carries 

 my memory back to the time when the sound of martial music 

 was almost as familiar to American ears as the ringing of the 

 church -bells. By their dark -green uniforms, so dark as to be 

 almost black, I know them to be riflemen. They form one of 

 the battalions of the " Royal Rifles," the " Royal Americans," 

 raised originally in America, and which served there in the 

 French and Indian War, still proudly bearing on its record the 

 names of some of the bloody battles of that conflict, the result 

 of which assured to the British crown the possession of the Can- 

 adas. We stop as they pass, marching with a quick, cadenced 



