Extracts from Niles' Weekly Register, Baltimore, 1812.
"Extract of a letter from a gentleman at Detroit to his friend in Pittsburg, dated July 7, 1812.—'General Hull is making preparations to cross the river this evening or to-morrow, and it is expected that an immediate attack is contemplated on Maiden (Amherstburg). The army are all in health and good spirits, and wait with anxiety to be put on the other shore: they are certainly as fine looking men as I ever saw.'
"We have several reports of the capture of Fort Malden. General Hull has sent expresses to the governors of Ohio and Kentucky for further supplies of troops, supposed for the purpose of maintaining the ground he may take, and to keep the allies in check. We trust he may religiously adhere to his proclamation, whatever General Brock may say, and give no quarters to the white savages when found fighting by the side of the Indians, for whose extensive murders the British should be made responsible."
FOOTNOTES:
[156] "The 'Letters of Veritas' were originally printed in a weekly paper published at Montreal, in Lower Canada, and subsequently collected into the little volume before us. Within a small compass, these unpretending Letters contain a greater body of useful information upon the campaigns in the Canadas than is any where else to be found. They are, we believe, the production of a gentleman in Montreal, of known respectability. Though not a military man, he enjoyed the best opportunities for acquaintance with the circumstances of the war; and as these letters, which excited great attention in the Canadas, appeared in successive papers while Montreal was filled with almost all the officers of rank who had served in the country, it may reasonably be presumed that his errors, had he committed any, would not have escaped without censure. Yet no reply was ever attempted to his statements, no doubt ever expressed in the provinces, of the correctness of his assertions."—Quarterly Review, July, 1822.
[157] Wampum is the current money among the Indians. It is of two sorts, white and purple: the white is worked out of the insides of the great Congues into the form of a bead, and perforated so as to be strung on leather; the purple is worked out of the inside of the muscle shell. They are wove as broad as one's hand, and about two feet long; these they call belts, and give and receive them at their treaties, as the seals of friendship. For lesser motives, a single string is given; every bead is of a known value; and a belt of a less number is made to equal one of a greater, by so many as is wanted being fastened to the belt by a string.—Buchanan's North American Indians.
[158] It is impossible here to forget (however different were the circumstances and character of the two warriors) that fine passage by the splendid historian of Rome, wherein he immortalizes the death and funeral of the ferocious Attila, in language at once musical and sublime, and which is probably without an equal in the whole range of English literature: "His body was solemnly exposed in the midst of the plain, under a silken pavilion; and the chosen squadrons of the Huns, wheeling round in measured evolutions, chaunted a funeral song to the memory of a hero, glorious in his life, invincible in his death, the father of his people, the scourge of his enemies, and the terror of the world."
[159] The monument itself is not yet finished; we shall therefore defer our description of the edifice until it is completed.
[160] It is remarkable that, on inspecting the remains, the body of Colonel M'Donell was found to be almost entirely decomposed,—whilst that of the general was still firm and nearly entire; some of the flesh and lineaments of his martial countenance being yet visible.