stormy night to remove the sloop some distance from our boat, 
and place in it an officer and three of the least intoxicated artil¬ 
lerymen. The night was dark, and we were compelled to cast 
anchor and remain till morning. 
The next morning the weather was still cloudy and rainy; the 
storm was particularly strong, and the wind ahead. The ma¬ 
chinery was too weak to make any progress. We therefore saw 
Montreal three hours before we could reach it; the current parti¬ 
cularly was so strong between Montreal and the Isle of St. Helen, 
that in spite of the machinery we were driven backwards. At 
last we were obliged to draw up the boat by aid of six oxen, two 
horsed, and ten men. The Lady Sherbrook, however,, is one of 
the oldest steam-boats on the St. Lawrence, and the captain him¬ 
self confessed that she was so rotten that she was not worth repair¬ 
ing, and will soon be condemned. About 4 o’clock in the after¬ 
noon, after we had been forty-six hours on our journey, which 
took but twenty-six hours going down, we were landed at Mon¬ 
treal. The battery on the Island of St. Helen saluted us with 
twenty-one guns. The first information we received was, that 
fifty houses were burned down yesterday in the suburbs of the 
town, and that this misfortune fell mostly upon the poorer class, 
whose houses were- not insured. 
Mr. Bingham, from Philadelphia, who married a rich heiress 
here, and turned Catholic to get possession of her estate, gave a 
ball to-day, in honour of the first birth-day of his only daugh¬ 
ter, and politely invited our company. We accepted the invita¬ 
tion, and rode to the ball at 9 o’clock. He was twenty-four years 
of age, and his wife nineteen; has many friends, because his cellar 
is well filled, and has the talent to spend his money liberally 
among the people. We found assembled in his rich and taste¬ 
fully furnished halls the whole fashionable world of Montreal. 
They mostly dance French contra dances, commonly called Spa¬ 
nish dances. To the contra dances, in honour of the officers 
of the seventieth regiment, who are the favourite young gen¬ 
tlemen, they have adopted tedious Scotch melodies; to the Spanish 
dances they played German waltzes. The native ladies conversed 
in very soft Canadian bad French, not even excepting our hand¬ 
some landlady. I took particular notice of a Miss Ermatinger, 
the daughter of a Swiss, and an Indian woman, on account of her 
singular but very beautiful Indian countenance. She was dress¬ 
ed in the best taste of all, and danced very well. Indeed there 
was a great deal of animation at this ball, as well as a great deal 
of luxury, particularly a profusion of silver plate and glass in the 
house of Mr. Bingham, whose sister is the wife of the banker, 
Baring, of London. 
Vol. I. 
13 
