“Oh, what were the dreams, as they sunk to rest,
Of that devoted band,
Who lay, as a babe on its mother’s breast,
On the shores of their native land?
Breathed they of fire, or of streaming blood,
Or the thundering cataract’s whelming flood?
Strong manhood’s godlike form was there,
With his bold and open brow,
And age, with his wearied look of care,
And his floating locks of snow;
And the agile form of the stripling boy,
With his throbbing pulse of hope and joy.
They dreamed of the happy hours of home,
Of a blessed mother’s prayer,
Of the cherished wife in that sacred dome,
Of the lisping prattlers there;
And the stripling dreamed of his young love’s smile
When he left her bound for the fatal isle.
Oh, what was that dim, ominous sound,
That struck on the sleeper’s ear,
Yet roused him not from his rest profound
Till the unsheathed blade was near?
And it seemed as the air and the rocks were riven
By the slogan of death and the wild shriek given.
Oh, vain was the strife of the struggling few
With a well-armed murderous band;
For the gallant barque, with her blood-drenched crew,
Is floating from the strand,
And the young boy’s quarter cry it bore
To the purple wave, with his own heart’s gore.
On, wildly onward, sped the craft,
As she swiftly neared the verge;
And the demon guards of the black gulf laughed,
And chanted a hellish dirge;
And the booming waters roared anew
A wail for the dead and dying crew.
As over the shelving rocks she broke
And plunged in her turbulent grave,
The slumbering Genius of Freedom woke,
Baptized in Niagara’s wave,
And sounded her warning tocsin far
From Atlantic’s shore to polar star.”
A careful computation from pages of prose, almost as flowery as the foregoing lines and oftentimes breaking into rhyme from a very luxuriousness of idea and rhythm, puts the lives aboard the Caroline at about ninety-nine in number. Thirty-three were killed and missing; thirty-three were towed into the middle of the stream when the boat was fired, and with her went over the ledge; there were also thrilling cries from “the living souls” on board, plus “wails of the dying,” presumably thirty-three cries and thirty-three wails, all gliding down the resistless rapids to perish by “the double horror of a fate inevitable.”
On the day following the cutting out five hundred men were told off to complete the work by driving the filibusters off the island, the three schooners, with boats and barges, being sufficient transport. “But what shall we do if a shot strikes our boat—we must either drown or go over the Falls,” was a query which sent Captain Drew off on another hazard. He pulled up stream in a four-oared gig, within pistol shot of the island, to see if the enemy’s field-piece was equal to hitting a boat which moved fast through the water. So far the casualties from the red-hot shot sent skipping along the Canadian shore were the death of young Smith of Hamilton, who, lying in a barn on some hay, had part of his thigh carried away and some ribs broken, and an old sailor named Millar who served Captain Luard’s guns, and had his leg taken off. Millar asked to see his leg, gave three cheers for the Queen, and died.
A twenty-four pounder, mounted on a scow, battered the point where the guns of Van Rensselaer were most active. Drew’s expedition brought upon themselves both musketry and field-pieces, at first innocent of all aim, but suddenly so improved that one shot made ducks and drakes on the water, just clearing the gunwale, and passing between Drew and his strokesman. This was from no amateur, but owed its precision to the hand of a young West Pointer—possibly of the “empty hand, stout heart, of fair military tactics” letter. Van Rensselaer has left it on record that the only moments of excitement to him in this episode were when the first gun was fired from the island, and when this boat’s crew, at early dawn, made its way in safety round them; so that Drew’s temerity was not without reward. These patriots had “kissed their rusty muskets” and vowed they would never lay them down until “the redemption of Canada was accomplished.” A “sympathetic” account tells us that the men so determined to do or die, in order to protect themselves from temptation had taken the pins out of the screws of the scows and burned their oars, resolved,