Mountie

“ We never knew, especially in the early days of the Mutiny, what a day might bring forth: we might even find our whole force annihilated. We had very scanty information about the rebels, and often our spies were not to be trusted. The whole country was up in arms; villages were forsaken, either for fear of us or because they had joined the rebels; the incessant marching and countermarching, and entrenching our camp after a long day’s march in a hot climate, were no joke; and I felt very proud of our force, especially of the Brigade, so well commanded by Captain Sotheby. ”

“ There was no rebellious chief in the district; no discontent. Yet he was a prisoner in the hands of some wild tribe; captured so suddenly that not one of his men had escaped to take word to the next British outpost and bring up a force to his assistance.
There was but one streak of consolation in his broodings—the knowledge that his daughter had not fallen alive into the hands of the barbaric soldiery. ”

“ See what solid regiments of the Master's army are in the land where slavery has perished, but where the problems which follow it are larger than ever before. Look up the locations of these missionaries on the map, and see where they are, in the valleys and on the mountains of the South, in plains of the far West, and on the shores of the Pacific sea. They report cheering tidings. Their schools are overflowing. Converts are being added to their churches. Our institutions are in harmony and zealous emulation. ”

“ They are commanded through the province, not by men who procured their commissions from a governor as a reward for making themselves pimps to his tools, and by discovering a hatred of the people, but by gentlemen, whose estates, abilities, and benevolence have rendered them the delight of the soldiers; and there is an esteem and respect for them visible through the province, which has not been used in the militia. ”

“ I cannot leave the command of the Forty-second Royal Highlanders without requesting you to express to them, in the strongest terms, how high an honour I shall always esteem it to have been for upwards of twenty years the colonel of a regiment, which, by its exemplary conduct in every situation, and by its distinguished valour in many a well-fought field, has earned for itself so large a share of esteem and of renown as that which belongs to the Forty-second regiment. ”

“ I like to regard the regiment as one large family; and when we consider the manifold clangers we dare, and the sufferings we endure together, all soldiers—officers and men alike—more than any other human community, have reasons for strong mutual attachment, and for feeling themselves indeed brothers. There are some of the brotherhood, however, over whom I have, at times, to keep a tight hand—yourself, for instance—Dick Monkton, eh! ”

“ Is there another nation that could call on native gentlemen, pay them nothing, or practically nothing, ask them to clothe and horse and feed themselves, form them into regiments, swear them in for three years and keep them for thirty, discipline them, let them officer their own troops, but put our own officers over theirs; and in spite of a difference in religion, language, customs and point of view produce such regiments? ”

“ Through this confusion and excitement we made our way unobserved, or, at any rate, unquestioned, till at length we came to the regiment of the Mountaineers, who, for the most part, were goatherds, poor people who lived upon the slopes of the precipices that enclosed the land of Mur. These folk, having little to do with their more prosperous brethren of the plain, were hardy and primitive of nature, and therefore retained some of the primeval virtues of mankind, such as courage and loyalty. ”

“ My Ransome, is this frayle and worthlesse Trunke;
My Army, but a weake and sickly Guard:
Yet God before, tell him we will come on,
Though France himselfe, and such another Neighbor
Stand in our way. There's for thy labour Mountioy.
Goe bid thy Master well aduise himselfe.
If we may passe, we will: if we be hindred,
We shall your tawnie ground with your red blood
Discolour: and so Mountioy, fare you well. ”

“ The men spring to ranks, the herd guards are hurrying in their startled horses, and the old chargers, scenting Indians and danger, toss their heads snorting in the air and come trotting in to their eager masters. All but one herd—"Look at the Grays," is the cry, for Montgomery's horses have burst into a gallop, excited by the shouts and clamor, and there they go up the slope, out to the front, and square into the fastness of the Indians. Not yet! A dozen eager troopers, officers and men, have flung themselves on their steeds, all without saddles, some without bridles, and are off in chase. ”

“ Now it will be so arranged that, in the course of time, each family of our Montaignais, if they become located, will take its own territory for hunting, without 59 following in the tracks of its neighbors; besides, we will counsel them not to kill any but the males, and of those only such as are large. ”

“ To our knowledge, not a man of your gallant and distinguished corps has been convicted of any crime before the civil authorities of this colony; a very gratifying circumstance, and bespeaking the high state of discipline of the regiment.
“To yourself, Sir, officers, and men, we sincerely tender our best wishes for your future welfare; and assured are we, that should the time arrive for the ‘Forty-second’ to be called into active service, they will display that loyalty and valour for which they are so justly renowned. ”

“ The Commander of the Forces congratulates the army under his command on the termination of the war of rebellion which has troubled the eastern frontier of Her Majesty’s South African Dominions for more than two years, and which at one time assuming the character of a war of races, had it not been arrested by their gallantry, perseverance, and unparalleled exertions, must have overwhelmed the inhabitants of the eastern district of the colony. ”

“ Vast lakes and rivers, mountains and cañons, not unlike to the glens the Highlanders had left in Scotland, confronted them. In the deep stillness of the woods wild animals slipped into the darkness, and savages were a sleepless menace. In the dead of a summer night the long-drawn cry of an Indian brave would chill the blood of some straggling soldier, or from the thicket would fly the arrows of death. It was a country where one force could not hope to keep in touch with another nor guard its lines of communication: an army was swallowed up in a wilderness of forests and rivers. ”

“ When a chief was at war with another tribe, for instance, he would move into the first village he came to, spread his own tent and those of his wives, post his retainers, and then despatch one of his men to the other combatant, commanding a powwow the next morning. ”

“ The inferior officers of the settlement, and the non-commissioned officers and privates of the regiment, have been infected with the itch for dealing; and many of the settlers themselves have either disposed of their farms or deserted them, to obtain the means or the leisure to devote themselves to a species of dealing which never failed to turn to good account. ”

“ Speaking to me, on one occasion, of the character of the Highland soldiers, ‘I consider,’ said he, ‘the Highlanders, under proper management, and under an officer who understands and values their character, and works on it, among the best of our military materials. Under such an officer, they will conquer or die on the spot, while their action, their hardihood, and abstinence, enable them to bear up against a severity of fatigue under which larger, and apparently stronger, men would sink. ”

“ That night in the post sat Sergeant Blue with paper and pen in hand,
And this is the word he wrote and signed and mailed to a foreign land:
"To U. S. Marshall of County Blank, greetings I give to you;
My squad has just brought in your men, and the squad was
"Sergeant Blue."
[Pg 69] There are things unguessed, there are tales untold, in the life of the great lone land,
But here is a fact that the prairie-bred alone may understand,
That a thousand miles in the fastness the fear of the law obtains,
And the pioneers of justice were the "Riders of the Plains." ”

“ The governor has kept a squad of the servants over on the hill you see at the farther end of the valley through which the road passes, as sentinels. They all have horses; and when they discover the approach of an enemy, they gallop to the mansion, and notify the colonel. ”

“ I am sorry that county is not better prepared, but alas! it is not easy to be prepared in a country rendered so artificially unwarlike as England. What signify all the speeches of the Orators, or rather of our ignorant, perhaps knavish babblers in Parliament against the Army? What has been the consequence of their insisting so often, contrary to common experience and common sense, that our Navy was a sufficient security. They only misled honest gentlemen. Their frothy words will not restore tranquillity, and public credit, nor repel the Highlanders. ”

“ So small a town is Montgomery, though the capital of the shire, that a man, it is said, who once tramped there in search of work, inquired in the town how far it was to Montgomery, for he thought he was merely passing through a village on the way to that place. ”

“ Individually we lament the departure of a father and a friend—as a regiment we would weep over the ashes of the most beloved of colonels! Although the undeviating advocate of discipline and good order, never did the star of rank impose a humiliating deference upon those whose affection and esteem he never failed to secure by his boundless benevolence and gentle manners. ”

“ Remembering the organization of the tribe everywhere prevalent, it is not difficult to understand that the army, or horde, that stands for the idea, was assembled on the clan basis. The number of men arrayed under one banner, the time during which they might cohere, the distances from home they could march, their ability to hold permanently what they had gained, together form an excellent metric scale of the culture grade in the several American provinces, and nowhere, even in the most favoured, is this mark high. ”

“ A guard is kept in the town and even in the bath quarter, which is nothing but a village, and every night two sentinels make the round of the houses, not so much to keep off the foe, as for fear of fire or other disturbance. ”

“ Some native corps, who remain some time in the one place, also grow it for the benefit of the regiment, and sometimes it is possible to obtain some from them; but as a rule they only have enough for their own use. ”

“ Let us suppose some measure introduced into one of the counties of England, affecting its population as vitally as compulsory manumission affects the slaves in our colonies, and what would be thought of any person who should gravely propose, that a public officer, amid other multifarious duties, should certify minutely as to the individual character of every man in the county? ”

“ Men came up the high road or down the paths across the fields, sometimes singly, but oftener in little parties of two or three, and, asking for the Captain, entered the office as private citizens and came out soldiers enlisted for the war. There was nothing heard of on the plantation except fighting; white and black, all were at work, and all were eager; the servants contended for the honor of going with their master ”

“ You may imagine, I cannot be very easy in a town which is really under the government of an insolent soldiery.—We expected to be immediately dismissed, after a night's lodging here, but the bassa detains us till he receives orders from Adrianople, which may, possibly be a month a-coming. In the mean time, we are lodged in one of the best houses, belonging to a very considerable man amongst them, and have a whole chamber of janizaries to guard us. ”

“ Frasers, Macdonalds, Camerons, Macleans, Macphersons, and others of disaffected names and clans, were enrolled; their chiefs or connections obtained commissions; the lower class, always ready to follow, with eagerness endeavoured who should be first listed.”
This regiment was called Montgomerie’s Highlanders, from the name of its colonel, the Hon. Archibald Montgomerie, son of the Earl of Eglinton, to whom, when major, letters of service were issued for recruiting it. ”

“ In parting with a regiment whose conduct has been so exemplary, and in which many of us have found personal friends, to whom we have been long and faithfully attached, we are anxious to express, however feebly, before you quit the colony, an acknowledgment of our regret [543] at your departure, and to convey to you, however inadequately, our cordial wishes for your happiness wherever you may be stationed, and that you may long continue to enjoy that distinguished renown which the 72nd Highlanders have so honourably achieved in the service of their country. ”

“ We were in daily expectation of the advance of the rebel General Montgomery, with a great force, so the duties of guards and sentinels were performed with great vigilance, as the whole country for miles around, if not actually in possession of the armed colonists, was full of people who were favourable to their cause, and were consequently inimical to the king and to us. ”

“ I had sent to this village two companies of cavalry and one of foot soldiers each under a captain, but upon their arrival they found it entirely deserted, though full of provisions; my men, however, managed to capture seven or eight natives near by, some of whom they had set at liberty so that they might go and speak to their chief, and tranquillise the people. They succeeded so well in this that, before my arrival at the place, its chief had already sent messengers with a present of provisions and cotton clothing. ”