Down the River to the Sea

by Agnes Maule Machar

After feasting their eyes on the lovely landscape, lighted by the warm afternoon sun, they were not sorry to descend from their lofty perch and sit down a while in a shady spot on the verge of the height, looking down over its dense foliage of oak and maple, birch and sumach, to the blue-green river that flowed beneath, half concealed by the rocky ledges. And as they sat there and Flora sketched, Kate described—helped out by May—how, early in one October morning of 1812, a line of boats filled with American troops had stolen silently across the stream, until the gallant “forlorn hope” had made a landing on the Canadian shore; and how the fire of the guns that greeted their passage had roused General Wolfe at Fort George, and brought him galloping up at the head of his suite to take command of the gallant little British and Canadian force, of only about eight hundred men, all told. But this little force had opposed the progress of the invaders every inch of ground with such desperate valor as speedily to change the attack into a rout, in which numbers of the brave American soldiers, fighting gallantly, even after all was lost, fell victims to the uncontrollable ferocity of the Indians, determined to avenge the death of the brave Wolfe, who had fallen while fighting like one of his own men, and cheering on the “York Volunteers.” Many of the invaders who escaped the pursuing Indians were killed in trying to descend the rocky height or drowned in attempting to swim across the river.

“A well-fought fight it must have been,” exclaimed Hugh, “worthy to take its place beside any of our historical battlefields. Why don’t we know more about these affairs at home? Then we might feel more as if Canada were indeed a ‘Greater Britain!’ And so these heights had their dead hero, too, as well as the ‘Heights of Abraham’?”

“Yes, indeed,” said May; “General Brock was indeed a hero, just as much as Wolfe, though he only helped to keep Canada, instead of conquering it.”

“But,” said Kate, “to go back to ancient history, do you know that this ridge here is said to have been once the shore of an ocean, and, at a later time, the boundary of the lake; and that here the Falls are supposed to have made their first plunge. The geologists have traced it all the way—its gradually receding front all the way back to where it is now.”

“I’m sure I’m much obliged to them,” said Hugh, “but somehow these vast blank periods of geological history don’t touch me half so much as a little bit of human interest. That battle you have been describing is far more interesting than æons of conflict between water and shale.”

“If it interests you so much,” Kate rejoined, “you can read more about it when we get home, in a Canadian story I have, called ‘For King and Country,’ which ends with the battle of Queenston Heights.”

And now Flora had finished her little sketch, and Mrs. Sandford warned the lingering party that the afternoon was waning fast, in which undoubted fact they acquiesced with a general sigh of regret. They descended by the steep winding road on the other side of the height, through thickets of aromatic red cedar, down to the scattered little village, embowered among its orchards below, and drove some distance farther on along the road in order that they might enjoy, in returning, the charming view of the Heights, approached from the Niagara side. They followed, for a mile or two, the undulating road which, after leaving the village behind, was skirted with white villas, surrounded by wide stretches of soft green sward, flecked by the shadows of fine old trees, looking like a bit of an English park; and then, turning at last, enjoyed the charming view of the now distant bay, with wooded point after point intervening, and the bold eminence of Queenston Heights always fitly closing in the picturesque vista.

They all thought the drive such an enchanting one that there was not a dissenting voice when Kate proposed that, since they were going to take the daily steamer to Toronto from Niagara, on their onward route, by far the pleasantest plan would be to drive thither, when at last they must leave the Falls.

Leaving the Falls seemed a sad prospect to all of them, but more especially so to May, over whom the Falls had thrown such a spell of fascination that she would have liked nothing better than to stay there all summer, feasting eyes and ears on their grandeur. But Hugh Macnab, who owned to the same feeling, added the consoling reflection that “a thing of beauty is a joy forever,” and May felt convinced that the memory of the Falls would indeed be “a joy forever” to her as long as she lived.

They could only spare three days more to Niagara, and as they sat that evening as usual on the piazza, regretting the lateness of the already waning moon, they agreed that now, having taken a general survey of the main points of view, they should not attempt any plans for the remaining days, but should spend them in those leisurely, unpremeditated loiterings, which are always the pleasantest way of absorbing all the more subtile and indefinite influences of noble scenery.