Government land in Canada was very cheap as compared with the price of land in the “States,” and this fact alone accounts for the great influx into Canada of Americans, immediately after the close of the War.
This land boom, so wisely fostered, was too soon paralyzed by the War of 1812, and nowhere did the hardships of that war fall more heavily than upon the new port of the lower Niagara. When the hastily-planned and ill-executed assault upon Queenston Heights was made, it was only defended by a small battery upon which a solitary field-piece was mounted. Those extensive earthworks west of the monument were an afterthought. They were not built until 1814.
General Brock was killed below this redan; and the heaviest fighting must have been along the foot of the ledge. A small cenotaph marks the spot where Brock fell. This little monument is more interesting from the fact that King Edward himself, as Prince of Wales, placed the block in position in 1860.
But for situation, no monument in the country can compare with that which marks the place of General Brock’s sepulchre. Standing on the very crown of the Heights, this shaft dominates a wonderful picture. The monument itself is of the usual British type, and the figure surmounting it might be Nelson, so very like is it to that hero’s attitude in stone.
The house into which General Brock was carried dying stands, a grey-stone ruin by the untraveled way. Other wounded soldiers besides Brock were carried into that low-roofed house to die. Diagonally across from this place is the house in which Laura Secord was living when she saved the British stores at De Cew’s.
It is not generally known that this famous Canadian heroine was born and lived in Massachusetts, until her twentieth year. In 1795 her father, Thomas Ingersoll, a Revolutionary soldier, came to Canada to buy land; and shortly after the family arrived at Niagara, Laura married James Secord of Queenston.
During the second year of the War of 1812, the Niagara frontier of Canada was in possession of the American forces, and American soldiers were billeted upon every family on the border.
Hearing some officers, whom she was thus forced to entertain, discussing a plan for seizing the stores at the De Cew house, some eighteen miles away, she determined to inform the officer in command at that place. It meant a long, dangerous journey on foot, over hill and bog land and through a densely wooded country swarming with hideous savages from the Grand River, the allies of the British. But Laura Secord was equal to the occasion. Though she had started from home before daylight, night overtook her on the journey. Her courage and promptness saved the stores, and the officer in command sent her home under the protection of a guard.
When the Prince of Wales visited Canada he sent her one hundred dollars, the first recognition made of her services to her adopted country.
As we stroll farther along the King’s highway we come to the Wadsworth cottage, a rough-cast dwelling with sills much below the level of the street. This was a tavern at the time of the battle, and in the front room to the left, General Scott was detained as a prisoner. It was here, while waiting for his captors to complete arrangements for his removal to Fort George, that an Indian in the barroom deliberately took aim at the General through the open door, and would have shot him but for the presence of mind of Captain Thaddeus Davis, a British officer, who promptly knocked the gun from the Indian’s hands.