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and advanced to recover the Fort George and Chippewa point of vantage. The skir- were not yet arrived. It looked as if the Americans had won the heights and established themselves on the point of vantage at which they had aimed.

mish grew hot: the British and Canadians charged, were repelled, and charged again. At this moment it was reported to Brock that his first reinforcement had come uptwo weak companies, 90 men, of the York Militia from Brown's Point. He was turning to shout to the messenger, "Push on the York Volunteers," when he was struck by a ball in the right breast, which passed completely through his body. He rolled off his horse, had just breath left enough to bid the officer nearest him to keep his fall concealed, and was dead within the minute. His corpse was carried down hill to Queenstown and hidden under a pile of blankets, in obedience to his orders.

The charge which Brook was leading was continued, under the leadership of his Canadian aide-de-camp John Macdonell. It drove the Americans out of the battery, and to the very edge of the precipitous slope behind it. But the striking force was too small: Macdonell fell, and with him nearly all the other officers of the companies engaged. The enemy was being continually reinforced up the steep path behind, and the odds were too great. The attack failed, and the survivors withdrew far back on to the plateau, where they were joined by the remnants of the detachment that had been fighting below. Not more than 200 unwounded men were left the reinforcements from

But Brock's glorious fight had not failed in its object. The enemy was exhausted: the regular regiment which formed the kernel of his army had done most of the fighting, and was now a spent force. The reinforcements were crossing the river with an incredible slowness, due to want of order and discipline. Only 1300 men had been passed up to noon, out of 3500 who had to cross. The advanced division, reduced to some 600 or 800 men, had established itself, it is true, on the heights, but had neither begun to entrench, nor deploy in order to drive back the small force still opposed to it. General van Rensselaer, who had crossed late, after surveying the position, grew anxious about his reinforcements. The boats, he says in his despatch, were plying very slowly, the troops embarking with inexplicable tardiness. He recrossed the river, to hurry matters up in the camp at Lewistown.

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In his absence the crisis suddenly came: at last Brigadier Sheaffe had arrived from Fort George with four companies of the 41st and 200 Indian warriors. From the other flank at Chippewa about 100 more regulars had come up. The whole met the wrecks of the containing force near the village of St Davids, below

the northern brow of Queenstown Heights. They mustered only 800 in all, including the Indians; but the sole chance lay in striking before the whole American army was over the water. Brock's intentions were known, and his spirit still dominated in the strife, though his body lay hidden obscurely two miles away. Sheaffe, though he had many defects, was a good fighter: an old "United Empire Loyalist," who had served King George from the days of Bunker's Hill, he saw the chance of avenging many an ancient grudge on the old enemy. He deployed his little force, advanced obliquely up the heights at a great distance from the enemy's front, and sent out his Indians to work through some wooded ground on the left against the American flank, while he himself, the regulars on the right, the militia on the left, advanced in one two-deep line against their front.

The attack was completely successful: the Americans were tired out by the earlier fighting, and disheartened by the nonarrival of their reinforcements. Many of the militia, it is said, were skulking at the foot of the slope, or on the river bank, instead of holding their place on the heights. One push sent the whole line flying: reeling back from the battery which they held, the whole were brought up by the precipice at their back. A few scrambled away by the path, but the majority threw down their arms. Pressing on, as best they could, in such rugged ground,

VOL. CXCII.—NO. MCLXVI.

Sheaffe's men took more prisoners in the flat below, and saw the boats shove off to the opposite shore with a flying remnant of their adversaries.

And so, like Douglas at Otterbourne, "the dead man won the field." The part of the American army which had crossed the Niagara was practically annihilated-the dead are said to have been some 90 in all: the wounded 400: there were 79 officers and 852 men captured, including Brigadier-General Wadsworth, and the artillery Colonel Scott, who was afterwards to be the Commander-in-Chief of the American Army in a later war. Four hundred and thirty-six of the prisoners belonged to the 13th United States Infantry, whose colours were captured, the rest to the militia. The British loss was 112 in all, of whom five-sixths came from the detaining force that had fought so well in the morning.

General van Rensselaer, from the opposite bank, had the mortification of seeing his advanced-guard cut up without being able to send help. His humiliating despatch confesses that his rear would not follow when they saw the danger of his van. "The ardor of the unengaged troops," he writes, "had entirely subsided. I rode in all directions, urged the men by every consideration to pass the river, but in vain. Lieut.-Colonel Bloom, who had been wounded in action and had returned, mounted his horse and rode through the camp, as did also Judge Peck,

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who happened to be there, exhorting the companies to proceed, but in vain.... Onethird part of the idle men might have saved all!" saved all!" It was fortunate for Canada and for Great Britain that the York and Lincoln Militia were as different in spirit from their opponents as was Brock from the incapable Van Rensselaer! The battle of Queenstown Heights brought the invasion danger to an end on the Niagara frontier for the rest of 1812, as the capture of Detroit had on the western frontier. Fighting was to recommence in the following spring, and to go through many vicissitudes. But there was never again the peril that Canada might be overwhelmed before she could be reinforced from Great Britain, which had been imminent all through the first autumn of the war. The tale of that struggle is not wholly a cheerful one to remember-English annalists do not linger over the names of the Guerrière, the Java, and the Macedonian: the battle of New Orleans was an "untoward event" of the blackest. But that is no reason why the exploits of Isaac Brock, the

saviour of Canada, should be forgotten.

The Provincial Legislature of the Upper Province reared a column as a memorial over his body, and that of his faithful aide-de-camp Macdonell, on the spot where they fell. Many years after it was wrecked by an Irish-American named Lett, who had secretly introduced a quantity of gunpowder into the vault at its base. To wreck the grave of a hero seemed to him a neat and appropriate method of insulting the British Empire. The Canadians replaced the shattered monument by a much more stately structure, which dominates the whole surrounding countryside, and is one of the landmarks of the Niagara country. A proper centenary celebration was held around it on October 13th last. Great Britain placed a cenotaph in Brock's honour in the south transept of St Paul's Cathedral, on which (in the classical style of the day) the general sinks down dying into the arms of a soldier of the 41st Regiment, while an Indian chief stands weeping at his feet.

OXFORD.

C. W. C. OMAN.

FROM THE OUTPOSTS.

RAMMU.

RAMMU was an aboriginal of the Vindhyan Sandstone hills in Central India. He entered my life one night in the rains, when all the world had turned to blue lightning and running water, and even the frogs were battered into silence. Asleep in the verandah, I was awakened by some one gently pulling at my right toe, which is the correct Indian method of rousing a heavy sleeper. Anticipating no more urgent news than that the bungalow thatch had at last fallen in, I inquired, not too politely, what the trouble was. Then there stole up from the foot of the bed to the pillow end a deplorable sample of brown humanity, and realising that something was seriously the matter, I sat sideways on the bed to get a better view of him.

one ear in his left hand and stands on one leg, in token of abject penitence. Speech failing him, the little man made desperate efforts to put himself into the position demanded, as he evidently considered, by the occasion, but he was stiff and stupid and shivering. First he dropped his axe, which he promptly retrieved with his toes; then he hesitated between a choice of ears, and when, finally, he selected one, even his splay aboriginal foot proved a pediment inadequate to his rocking body, and he fell with a clatter on the flags. I helped him to his feet and into the office, where there was a lantern burning. A rug and a tot of whisky put life into him, and he told me his story.

He was a Bhoi Gond from the teak forests on the eastern border, and had come to tell me that he had killed his wife the morning before. The elders of the village, his caste fellows, had said that the Sarkar insisted on full and early information of such happenings, in the absence of which they would be put to grievous troubles. So he had started for headquarters at once, trusting to cover the thirty odd miles before before nightfall. rain came down and all the streams rose. He had swum three rivers and lost his waist - cloth in one

He was about five feet high, and stark naked, except for a dirty rag round his temples. The steady flicker of the lightning lit up his dripping body, but even if his face had been invisible, the pattern of the axe he carried showed that he was from the jungles. His teeth were chattering so violently with cold and exposure that he could not utter a word in answer to my questions. He was in grave mental But heavy trouble also. An uneducated Indian confessing to a misdemeanour seizes the lobe of

(but not, I observed, his axe!). Then he had been overtaken by a colic. All these things had delayed him, and he had been obliged to wake me up, for he had been given to understand the matter was urgent. His wife had persisted in burning his bread, and no man could put up with that for ever, though he had been long-suffering and beaten her patiently for weeks. On the latest occasion, however, instead of taking her beating quietly, she had called him two shameful names and run out of the hut. After a short pursuit he had thrown his axe at her. He could not tell where the weapon had struck her, because he had not looked, but she fell and never rose again, and she was certainly dead, and he had brought the axe as ordered by the village headHis story told, he curled up in a corner of the office and went to sleep.

The sessions judge who in due time tried him, found himself in a dilemma. To begin with, by the time the police had waded to the village, the corpse had disappeared. Then there were no witnesses of the offence, and while he was compelled to accept the accused's version of the facts, he was equally bound to believe his statement that he had no intention of killing the woman. The axe was scarcely heavier than a toy. Eventually Rammu was convicted of causing hurt with a dangerous weapon and sentenced to three months' rigorous imprisonment.

A week after his release he appeared in my verandah with an appropriate testimonial of his gratitude. Not for him to offer the "dolly" of pineapples and guavas, melons and graft mangoes, that the civilised Hindu on high days and holidays deposits at the District Officer's doorway. But he had his axe, which cost only fourpence, and his eyes, and some hundreds of miles of jungle to ransack, and the pile of uncanny eatables that he poured on the verandah flags would have stocked a small

greengrocer's shop. There were yams, horribly resembling scalded puppies with their legs lopped off, and contorted roots like knotted ropes which, he explained, must be scraped and soaked for a whole night in running water to steep the poison out of them. Otherwise the eater would become violently insane. There were green and golden fruits of agonising sourness or astringency, and sometimes of both, many varieties of indigestible-looking seeds, and a heap of sickly yellow flowers with fleshy petals that smelt like hair-wash. These last were to give flavour to the yams. When I had sufficiently admired his present he stood on one leg, put his palms together, looked me cheerfully in the face, and said in a loud voice, "Hé, Dadda, make me your servant!"

I did not accept his offer. To put a wild Bhoi to housework would have been sheer cruelty, and though his prehensile toes were eminently

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