A few details of this international service would seem to be required to explain the nature of the duties intrusted to the men. Having once entered the woods, the survey was continued without interruption, until the termination of the out-door operations of 1845. Occasionally the men worked in concert with the officers of the United States' topographical engineers. Two non-commissioned officers were constantly employed under Captains Robinson and Pipon, in taking and calculating observations for latitudes and longitudes, and for absolute longitudes by lunar transits and culminating stars, to discover the azimuthal bearings of the line, as pointed out by the treaty of Washington. They also ascertained the comparative heights of astronomical stations, &c., at various points of the line from barometrical observations. One non-commissioned officer for many months was attached to the American party to see that they effected their survey according to the treaty; one carried the chronometers between the astronomical camps; and the remainder were employed singly in charge of large parties of labourers and axemen, carrying on the general business of marking out the boundary, and of surveying and levelling it. Embraced in the operations also was the survey of the waters, roads, and other prominent objects in the vicinity of the line, essential to the discovery of the boundary, at any time, by reference to the natural features of the country; and when the survey closed in 1845, seven of the party were, for more than eight months, stationed with the commission at Washington, engaged in the duty of computing and registering astronomical observations, also in laying down and plotting the work and finishing the plans of the line.
The process of surveying and levelling is too well known to need notice, but it may be desirable to afford an idea of one description of work, to show in what respect assistance was given to obtain the longitude of a particular place. Between the northwest branch-station and Quebec, it was required to ascertain the difference of longitude; but as the usual method of finding it by the interchange of chronometers could not be resorted to, a hill some twenty miles away from the branch station, which could be seen from Quebec, was selected as the station for an observing party. Captain Pipon, therefore, left the woods, and established his transit instrument on the Plains of Abraham. With a pocket chronometer, tent, provisions, gunpowder, &c., sergeant Bernard M‘Guckin removed to a range of hills from the station above Lake Ishæganalshegeck, and encamped himself and his labourers on the highest point of the range, which was covered to the top with dense wood. Climbing the height, and finding he could see back to the Lake Hill and forward to Quebec, he set his labourers to clear away the summit, except one high tree which he stript of all the leaves and branches likely to intercept the free range of the observations. At the base of this tree he constructed a high platform, and every evening for two hours, at intervals of ten minutes, the sergeant fired flashes of gunpowder, by hoisting the charge, with the assistance of a pulley, to the top of the tree with a burning slow match attached. The quantity of powder used for each flash varied from a quarter to half a pound. Some of the nights the wind blew strongly, and the charge exploded before reaching the top of the tree. On a clear night the flashes could be seen with the naked eye at the Quebec observatory, forty miles distant. Simultaneous observations were made on six different evenings, and forty-six flashes were noted, sufficient to give a good difference of longitude. The result of the experiment was most successful. An attempt was afterwards made to find the difference of longitude between the stations, by the transmission of chronometers; but the effect deduced was worthless compared with that obtained from the flashes. These observations were a part of the scheme for tracing the straight sixty-four mile line of boundary from the outlet of Lake Pohenagamook to the hill station on Lake Ishæganalshegeck. When the observations were completed, Captain Robinson left the woods and placed his chronometers in charge of a non-commissioned officer of sappers at Montreal, who wound them up and compared them during the winter.[[475]]
The accuracy of this means of observation was further tested on the western portion of the line ending at St. Regis by the operations of corporal Bastard. In August, 1845, having selected the highest summit on Mount Rougement, near Chambly, for a station, he reciprocated flashes with Major Graham of the U. S. topographical engineers at Rouse’s Point, with great precision and success.[[476]] The same was done by corporal Thomas Forbes from the top of Jay’s Peak in Vermont, who flashed at ten-minute intervals from the surface of a piece of flat board. In six fine nights eighty flashes were observed in common. These series of observations connected the points of St. Regis and St. Helen’s, and the latter again with Rouse’s, testing at the same time the difference of longitude between the several stations.[[477]]
When not in tents, a sort of hut constructed on the spot was the only habitation of the surveyors, and twigs of the spruce tree, felled by the axemen, formed their bed. They had good blankets and warm clothing; but such was the severity of the weather, and such the inconvenience of their bivouac, that frequently in the morning they arose for work either with stiffened limbs, or soaked with melted snow. For the most part, however, the detachment was free from sickness despite the intense cold in winter, and the great heat in summer. Locked as they were in a thick forest, covered by an impenetrable foliage, the oppressive heat of midsummer was almost insupportable. In the spring scurvy was common among them, accompanied with sore gums, loose teeth, discoloured legs, and emaciated frames, but some well-known simple specifics soon restored them to health.[[478]] Only one man became an invalid on the duty, arising from an injury he sustained by falling from a shelving bank, on account of which he was sent home and discharged.
The royal engineers with their sappers and assistants were the first to penetrate these wilds and the first to open a way through their mazes. Scrambling through an unbroken forest with snow-shoes on, interrupted at every step by stunted underwood, not a little augmented their fatigues. Often the snow was hip deep; and when the melting commenced, the obstacles and toils of travelling became greater. The snow-shoes then became useless, and yet without them the men sank above their knees in half-thawed snow, and then had to wade through the swamp. Streams in those seasons became rivers, and rivers deep torrents; and such was the difficulty of pushing through the snow, that one party was four days going ten miles.[[479]] Difficulties like these were more especially felt in the region embraced within the “sixty-four mile line.” A vast prairie it was, thickly overgrown with tangled bush, undisturbed for centuries, by the axe of industry. The full influence of many a storm, however, had beaten down the forest and levelled trees too old to bear its blast. These lay across the track intersected and confused, just as the wind had blown them; and the dense bush, climbing over the aged trunks, so matted the vegetation, that the trials of travelling were only overshot by the general hardships of the enterprise. There were perils too encountered of a serious character, which only stout frames and sturdy hearts could have conquered. On one occasion, corporal Owen Lonergan was sent to measure three check lines; it was biting cold at the time, and the ground was covered with snow some two or three feet deep. Though encumbered with an instrument, a greatcoat, and heavy clothes, he entered with spirit upon his work and rapidly completed two of the checks, but on commencing the third he was obliged to relinquish it, as his hands, painfully benumbed, had lost their power. The snow by this time was very high, and it was only by superhuman effort, sustained for several hours, that he succeeded in mastering the difficulties of his situation, and regaining his hut before nightfall.
The survey of the sixty-four mile line was important because of the necessity imposed by the treaty of making it rigidly strait. A force of labourers, guided in the duty by the most intelligent men with the commission, first struck out the line as indicated by astronomical observation. When this preliminary trace was effected, other labourers, in strong batches, “directed by non-commissioned officers of the sappers and miners were sent to cut the whole line thirty feet wide, clearing a way in the centre, of about eight feet wide, but leaving the other part with the stumps breast high and the trees as they had fallen. These parties were guided in their cuttings by the marks which had been set up on the ridges at no very great distances apart from each other. When the line had been thus cut out from end to end, a transit instrument was sent through it, adjusting correctly all the station poles, and insuring the straightness of the line beyond all doubt.”[[480]]
At the termination of the survey, Lieutenant-Colonel Estcourt thus wrote of the conduct and services of the detachment: “I beg to acknowledge the valuable assistance they have rendered. The character of the duties intrusted to them has been such as must have been given to an officer had they not been attached to the commission, entailing thereby a great additional expense, not only on the score of wages, but also of equipment and assistance; and I doubt whether the work would have been better executed. All that was expected, therefore, from their employment has been fully realized; their efficiency in the field, and their general good conduct and respectability, have been very creditable to them and to their corps. Those who are now about to leave us, and have been at Washington during all our residence here, deserve the highest commendation for their uniform good conduct. In no single instance has there been the least occasion for complaint or even remark.” In his orders to the detachment at parting, he reiterated the substance of the above tribute, and spoke of the unmixed satisfaction he would look back upon the whole of his intercourse with the sappers. The survey pay of the men, in addition to their regimental pay, ranged between 2s. 10d. and 3s. 9d. a-day, and free rations and hotel expenses were also allowed them.[[481]]
The war in Kaffirland again broke out this year and afforded ample employment for the two companies of the corps, which were scattered in sections to the several posts on the frontier. A small detachment of sappers appears to have been the first troops to meet with hostile interruption in the prosecution of its duties, and the circumstance is quaintly alluded to in the following free metrical effusion of a facetious alarmist:—
“There was a stir in Kaffirland one morning,
A chief with Government some ground disputed;