ONE:The Canadas at that period contained only about sixty thousand souls, Quebec about seven thousand. But the city occupies a most formidable site. It stands on a steep and rocky promontory running into the left bank of the St. Lawrence, about a hundred leagues from its mouth, and where the river, from a breadth of from twelve to twenty miles, rapidly narrows to about one mile. The city is built part on the rocky heights, part on the slopes below. Up the river from the city rose still higher and almost inaccessible steeps, called the Heights of Abraham, and, on the other hand, the side of the city down the stream was bounded by the river St. Charles, which there runs into the St. Lawrence. The stretch of ground between the St. Charles and the stream of Montmorency, some miles lower, called Beauport, was connected by a bridge with Quebec. On this ground, as the most accessible side of the city, Montcalm had encamped his army, consisting altogether of ten thousand French, Canadians, and Indians.
THREE:Out in the corral the cow-boy was holding forth. The men had stopped work on the instant that Kirby had turned his back. If Kirby could loll on soft cushions and drink tea, as free-born Americans and free-souled Irishmen they might do the same. "It's all right," said the cow-boy, with a running accompaniment of profanity, as he cleaned his brutal Mexican bit. "Johnny Bull don't have to believe in it if he don't like. But all the same, I seen a feller over here[Pg 124] to the 3 C Range, and he told me he seen the military camped over to San Tomaso a week ago, and that there was a lot of stock, hundred head or so, run off from the settlements. You see, them Apaches is making for the southern Chiricahuas over in Sonora to join the Mexican Apaches, and they're going to come this here way. You see!" and he rubbed at the rust vigorously with a piece of soft rawhide.260
Cumberland was now hunting down the fugitives on all sides. He posted himself at Fort Augustus, which the insurgents had blown up before leaving it, and from that centre he sent out his myrmidons in every direction to hunt out the Highlanders, and shoot them down on the spot or bring them in for execution. Everywhere the unhappy clans were pursued by their hereditary enemies, the Whig clans, especially by the men of Argyllshire, and massacred with the most atrocious cruelty. They stripped their houses and then burned them down, drove away the cattle, and tracking the miserable families into dens and caves, smothered them with burning heather, or thus forced them to rush out upon their bayonets. In all these diabolical proceedings, the Duke of Cumberland and the brutal General Hawley were foremost. "After all," Cumberland (whose wicked work earned him the name of "The Butcher") wrote to the Duke of Newcastle from Fort Augustus, "I am sorry to leave this country in the condition it is in, for all the good that we have done has been a little blood-letting, which has only weakened the madness, but not at all cured it; and I tremble for fear[108] that this vile spot may still be the ruin of this island and our family."
