Canada; its Defences, Condition, and Resources / Being a third and concluding volume of "My Diary, North and South"

by Sir William Howard Russell

On waking up it seemed as though day had just dawned, but the watch said it was nearly eight o’clock. A cold white light, filled with rime, battled through the frost on the windows of the carriage, which was spread over the glass like beautiful damascened white tablecloths. Scraping away a lovely trellis pattern with my nail, I opened a space of clear transparent ocean in the ice-sea, and was rewarded for my pains by a view of a cloud of snow which had been falling all night, and now rested deep on the ground, and turned the pines and firs bounding the line of rail into ragged white tumuli.

The train still creaked and bumped now and then over the snow, squeaked, puffed, and grated, and at last came to a standstill, again went on, and again halted. At last we reached a station. Seven hours behind time! A sensation of hunger by no means slight fell upon us. Frost is an appetizer of undoubted merit. We had neglected laying in a viaticum. More prudent and accustomed travellers produced flasks and brown-paper parcels, and all the wonderful things which Americans consume on the voyage. Let me not be fastidious, however; for after a time I envied men who were discussing pleasantly fragments of unseemly cakes, spice-nuts, and brandy-balls for breakfast.

My companions prowled up and down the horrid car, reeking with the stove-drawn odours of many bodies during the night—they sought food like young lions. Pah! what an atmosphere it was!—all windows closed by reason of cold intense outside, the hateful stoves, one in the centre of the car, and one at each end, heated almost to redness, surrounded by men who crowded up, and chewed tobacco, and smote the iron surface with hissing burnt-sienna-coloured jets!—frowsty, fusty, and muggy exceedingly. There was a deposit of train-oil,—a hot humanised dew all over us. And water, there was none to wash with. So I applied a handful of snow gathered on the carriage platform to my face and hands in lieu thereof, and got back to my seat just as A——n returned from some distant part of the train with hands full of apples. They were delicious, and with three or four of them, and a few cigars, we managed to construct a charming breakfast.

It was so dark when the train reached Kingston, that we could see nothing more than the outlines of the station. I was exceedingly anxious to visit a place of so much importance historically, commercially, and strategically, and fully intended to remain there for some days on my return to Toronto; but the Fates ordained that it was not to be, and all my personal knowledge of Kingston was derived from that glimpse in the dark of the railway terminus, and certain steeples and spires rising above the snow. But the position of the city confers upon it a very high place on the list of military posts for the defence of Canada, and some considerations connected with it will be discussed hereafter.

Politically Kingston has become a dead body since 1844, when its short-lived career as the capital and seat of government was cut short. The military genius of the French occupants in early days, in seizing on the best positions for the defence and maintenance of their conquest, is shown still, by the fact that our forts occupy the sites of those which were originally constructed by them. More than a hundred years before there was any trace of a city at Kingston, or any building save the wigwam of the Indian or the log-huts of the soldiery, the Count de Frontenac built a fort in communication with the great system, from the St. Lawrence to the Ohio, of the French strongholds, which was destined to extend to the Mississippi, and to enclose the troublesome English Colonies within stringent limits. When this fort was captured by Colonel Bradstreet in 1756, the French had only established a kind of military colony and a very insignificant trading-post round the fort. In little more than twenty years subsequently, the present town was founded; and in the war with America the place became of very great consequence.

It is a fact curious enough, and worthy of some consideration, that the great war in the middle of the last century, which ended in the loss to France of her hopes of Indian influence and of empire, and in the seizure of her American Colonies by Great Britain, should have, according to the best of American statesmen and philosophical reasoners, led also to the establishment of the United States, and the foundation of the greatest Republic the world has ever seen.

Kingston commands the entrance to the Rideau Canal, one of the principal means of communication between Lake Ontario and the interior of the country, forming an admirable connection between the Ottawa River and Lake Ontario: it is, in fact, the most important means of inland intercourse, because the difficulties in the way of an enemy are very considerable, either in a direct attack upon Kingston, if properly fortified, or in a flank movement against it from the interior.

The canal is brought into working order with the Grand Trunk Railway; so that if the Americans, our only possible enemy, were to make demonstrations against our frontier and our lines, with a view of intercepting our supplies and internal relations between the east and west of the province, it would be easy to disembark men and munitions at Kingston Mills and forward them by railway. Kingston, again, is an excellent point of observation, and with proper defences and aggressive resources, ought to command Lake Ontario and the entrance from the St. Lawrence. An adequate force stationed there, with a proper flotilla, could effectually keep in check any hostile demonstration from Cape Vincent, Sacket’s Harbour, or the other posts from Oswego to the western extremity of Lake Ontario.

The harbour is said to be excellent; there is a dockyard, which could be rendered capable of doing most of the work required for our light gunboats: and with the additions pointed out and urged by our engineer officers to the existing fortifications, Kingston could be made a position of as much military strength as it undoubtedly now is of strategical importance.

Between Toronto and Kingston there are, however, Port Hope, Coburg, and Belville on the line of railway, all of which present facilities for the landing of an enemy: at any one of these points a hostile occupation would cut the regular communications at once; and indeed it is very much to be regretted, in a military point of view, that engineering, commercial, or other considerations caused the makers of the Grand Trunk Railway to run the line close to the shores of a great inland sea, the opposite side of which belongs to a foreign country which has from time to time announced (if not through the lips of statesmen, by the popular voice) that the conquest of Canada is a fixed principle in its policy.