And then France remembered that those who had returned at the time of the Conquest said “it was very cold over there.”
“_Up then, brave Canadians! Get your rifles and make short work of it._”
“_Canadians, rally round your Head, Nor to these base insurgents yield._”
“_Sir Francis Bond Head’s entire government of Upper Canada was one long, earnest, undeviating opposition to the instructions of H. M. colonial ministers._”--BLAKE.
The winter of 1837, in England, was so severe that the mails were conveyed in sleighs, even in the southern counties, a freak of nature no doubt meant to put her in sympathy with the many million arpents of snow by that time dyed in patches with good Canadian blood. In the colony it set in stormily; but as December lengthened it became mild and open throughout the country, until on the day of Gallows Hill that month of storm had almost turned to the brightness and healthy beauty of a Canadian June. The brilliant sunlight which was to burnish up the arms of the men of Gore had power to convert the blackest landscape into a thing of beauty--a scene peculiar to the land of shield of crystal, golden grain and Italian sky. Straight from the Laurentian Hills the sun turned his roses and purples on the bright tin spires of parish churches, blazed in small squares of white-curtained habitant windows, where weeping wives and mothers execrated the Dictator in voluble patois, and glared on the blackened drama of Le Grand Brûlé. The snow which made the background of that Lower Canadian picture sparkled under the prismatic colours, and lit up the icy fragments like the lustres of a chandelier. The mysterious bell of St. Regis sounded its Angelus through the rosy atmosphere; the Caughnawagas, waiting but a word to come forward in defence of their new Great Mother, grew a deeper tint as, turned from the sunk sun, they knelt to their aves. Farther on it touched on the cabins of Glengarry, where ninety-nine out of every hundred men were variations of the name Macdonald, with only a nickname--Shortnose, Longnose, Redhead or Mucklemou’--to distinguish them; all busy furbishing up every available weapon, ready to follow where they might be called. If one record profanes not their memory some of them went out as infantry, to return as kilted cavalry; naught but intervention of stern discipline prevented Jean Baptiste’s herds being in front of the kilts on the return march; their genius as linguists had failed when their Gaelic fell on patois-accustomed ears.