But strangest want of all; though there is in the Province a Quarter-master General’s Department, whose special business is, with other things special, to provide commanding officers with maps of the country, and though county maps abounded in the Canada common schools, and Normal School at Toronto, Colonel Peacocke, in command of the forces in the Niagara District went out without a map showing the roads upon which he would have to move the troops. He had a small chart of the Niagara peninsula, but it did not show the Welland roads. This want of a good map from which to question his advisers; with want of breakfast for 10th Royals, want of water canteens for both regulars and volunteers, delayed the advance of the main force from Chippewa. Colonel Booker had no map of any kind, nor paper of his own on which to write a message, which want became an event next day.
But O’Neil in command of the Fenians had a map of the roads. And also writing paper for his messages.
The narrative and narrator were at the Hamilton depot a minute ago. The absence of such a common-place element in field equipment as the best map which the Province could afford the commanders not then known; yet the apparent absence of artillery, causing a tremulous apprehension that the volunteers who had gone hours before, and the regular infantry now on board to go, were to be exposed to the hazard of——
No; not this branch of the army of the front. Here came the Royal Artillery from Toronto; the Armstrong guns on platform cars; horses in vans; men guarding guns, sentries guarding horses; detachment of 47th regulars. Hurrah! Loud was the shouting on the Hamilton depot platform. Cheerful the military responses.
The time was 2.30 p. m. June 1st. The Toronto train with two engines went ahead. Hamilton train followed. After a delay at St. Catherines the two trains reached Suspension Bridge, Niagara river, about 6 p. m.
Another view of this large subject, public safety of Canada, lies in the pathway of this narrative which cannot be here avoided. Let us look it in the face.
CHAPTER VIII.
American newspapers had a “grim satisfaction” at seeing Canada “scared.” Assertion that Canadians, as a people, during the American civil war sympathised warmly with the legitimate government and loyal citizens of the United States. Extracts from “Canada a Battle Ground,” published 1862. And, “Where is Canada Drifting?” 1863.
Though this chapter may seem to interrupt the story of Canadian operations of defence, its matter forms an integral part of the larger field of circumstances which gave character to those operations. The Fenian invasion only became possible by sufferance of American popular opinion; and that was widely, deeply distempered, as regarded the British American Provinces and Great Britain, A full, true account of the Fenian invasion, cannot be given without the writer adverting to that distemper, speaking, as he believes he is about to do, for five-sixths of the whole people of Canada, and for the true national opinion of the British Islands.