A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed.. Benjamin Waterhouse
account, that the treatment of these poor fellows at their capture, and on their march, and more especially on board the transports from Quebec to Halifax, was barbarous in the extreme, and highly disgraceful to the British name and nation.
We have it asserted uniformly, that the prisoners, who came from Quebec to Halifax and to Boston, down the St. Lawrence, were treated and provided for in a manner little above brutes. Colonel Scott, now Major General Scott, came by that route from Quebec to Boston, and it is well known that he complained, that there were neither accommodations, provisions, nor any thing on board the ship proper for a gentleman. He spoke of the whole treatment he received with deep disgust and pointed resentment. If an officer of his rank and accomplishments had so much reason for complaint, we may easily conceive what the private soldier must have endured.
We paid every attention in our power to these poor soldiers, whose emaciated appearance and dejection gave us reason to expect that an end would soon be put to their sufferings by death. They, however, recruited fast; and we were soon convinced, that they were reduced to the condition we saw them in, absolutely for want of food. The account which these soldiers gave of their hardships was enough to fill with rage and resentment the heart of a saint. Four men were not allowed more provisions than what was needful for one. They assured us, that if they had not secretly come at some bags of ship bread, unknown to the officers of the transport, they must have perished for want of food. We cannot pass over one anecdote. Some fish were caught by our own people on the passage, in common with the crew, but they were compelled to deliver them all to the captain of the ship, who withheld them from the American prisoners. Some of the prisoners had a little money, and the captain of the transport was mean enough to take a dollar for a single cod fish, from men in their situation. This fact has appeared in several Boston papers, with the names of the persons concerned, and has never been contradicted or doubted. We give this as the common report; and as the Boston newspapers circulated freely through Nova Scotia and Canada, we infer, that had the story been void of truth, it would have been contradicted. This has been amply confirmed.
Those Americans who have no other knowledge of the English character, but what they gather from books made in London; and from their dramatic productions, and from their national songs, would believe, as I myself once did, that John Bull, (by which name Dean Swift personified the whole nation) was a humane, tender-hearted, generous gentleman; but let him be once in the power of an Englishman, or what is still worse, of a Scotchman, and it will correct his erroneous notions. An Englishman is strongly attached to his king and country; and thinks nothing on earth can equal them, while he holds all the rest of the world in comparative contempt. Until the days of Bonaparte, the people of England really believed that one Englishman could flog six Frenchmen. They, at one time, had the same idea of us, Americans; but the late war has corrected their articles of belief. The humanity of the British is one of the most monstrous impositions, now afloat in the world.
The most glaring feature in the English character is a vain glorious ostentation, as is exhibited in their elegant and costly steeples, superb hospitals, useless cathedrals, lying columns; such as the monument near London bridge, which as Pope says of it,
But if you wish to learn their real character, look at their bloody code of laws, read their wars with Wales, with Scotland, and with Ireland. Look at India, and at their own West India Islands. Look at the present "border war" carried on by associating themselves with our savages; look into this very prison, ask the soldiers just brought into it, what they think of British humanity or British bravery. A reliance on British veracity and honour caused these poor fellows to surrender, when they found them worse than the Indians. These things may be forgiven, but they ought never to be forgotten.
Nova Scotia, or New Scotland, was formerly called Chebucto by the native Indians. It is a dreary region. The country, for many miles west of Halifax, is a continued range of mountains, rising one over the other, as far as the eye can reach. The winters are severe, and the springs backward. The trees appeared to be as bare on the 26th of May as the same kind of trees do in the middle of March, with us in Massachusetts. To us there was something hideous in the aspect of their mountains; but this may have been partly owing to our own hideous habitation, and low spirits. The same objects may have appeared charming in the eyes of a Scotch family, just arrived from the fag-end of the Island of Great Britain.
The capital, Halifax, was settled by a number of British subjects in 1749. It is situated on a spacious and commodious bay or harbour, called Chebucto, of a bold and easy entrance, where a thousand of the largest ships might ride with safety. The town is built on the west side of the harbor, and on the declivity of a commanding hill, whose summit is two hundred and thirty-six feet perpendicular from the level of the sea. The town is laid out into oblong squares; the streets parallel and at right angles. The town and suburbs are about two miles in length; and the general width a quarter of a mile. It contained in 1793, about four thousand inhabitants and seven hundred houses. At the northern extremity of the town, is the king's naval yard, completely built and supplied with stores of every kind for the royal navy. The harbor of Halifax is reckoned inferior to no place in British America for the seat of government, being open and accessible at all seasons of the year, when almost all other harbors in these provinces are locked up with ice; also from its entrance, situation, and its proximity to the bay of Fundy, and principal interior settlements of the province. This city lying on the S coast of Nova Scotia has communication with Pictou, sixty-eight miles to the NE on the gulf of St. Lawrence, by a good cart road finished in 1792. It is twelve miles northerly of Cape Sambro, which forms in part the entrance of the bay; twenty-seven south easterly of Windsor, forty N by E of Truro, eighty NE by E of Annapolis, on the bay of Fundy, and one hundred and fifty-seven SE of St. Ann, in New Brunswick, measuring in a straight line. N lat. 44, 40, W lon. 63, 15.
It was settled chiefly by Scotchmen; and since the revolutionary war, which secured our independence, they have received considerable additions from the United States, of a class of men denominated refugees, who exiled themselves, on account of our republicanism, and of their own attachment to the best of kings. They show too often their hatred to us. To this day they call us "rebels;" and they speak to us in a style and tone as if they were sorry they could not murder us without the risk of being hanged.
In 1757 to 1759, when the British were engaged in a war with the French and Indians, and were in possession of Halifax with a large land and naval force, they were obliged to fetch their wood for fuel from Boston, as they could not venture, (says Capt. Knox, their military historian) beyond their walls and breastworks; and yet "thinking Johnny Bull" sent a land and naval force to conquer us, in 1814! of all "thinking" beings, of which we have ever had an account this Mr. Bull is the strangest! Peradventure much thinking has had the same effect on this poor gentleman that much learning has had on another.
It is strange, it is passing strange, that a whole people should be so strongly attached to the honor, crown and dignity of their conquerors, as the Scotch are to the present royal family of England, whose ancestor was, in fact, an usurper of the crown and dignities of the Scotch race of kings, the self sufficient Stewarts. The most remarkable thing in the reign of George the 3d (besides that of loosing America) is the perfect conciliation of the Scotch. Whether this was owing to my Lord Bute, or to his relation, I am unable to say; but it is a singular thing in the history of nations, when we take into consideration the cruel treatment of the Scotch so low down as the year 1745. As there is no new thing under the sun, and what has been may be again, who knows but that the Cherokees and Choctaws, the Chippewas, the Hurons, the Pottowatomies and Kickapoos, may hereafter become most attached to our government, and afford us Judges, Secretaries of State, Admirals, Generals, Governors of Provinces, Grooms of the Poet's Stool, and Historians? Who knows but the day will come, when there shall spring up from the mud and ooze of our own trifling lakes, another Walter Scott, who shall sing as sublimely the story of our border-wars; and who shall be able to trace a long and illustrious line of ancestry, up to the renowned chief Split-log, Walk-in-the-water, Hanging-maw, or to Tecumsch? Who knows but that among these American Highlanders, we may find another Ossian and another Fingal? for what has been, under similar circumstances, may be again.
Early in the month of July, we were not a