nt conflagration,
to which this place was remarkably subject when the houses were
covered with thatch or shingle. When the rays of the sun lay on the
buildings, they had the appearance of being cased in silver.

One of our objects in going to Quebec was to procure men, of which the
squadron was very deficient. Our seamen and marines were secretly
and suddenly formed into press-gangs. The command of one of them was
conferred on me. The officers and marines went on shore in disguise,
having agreed on private signals and places of rendezvous; while the
seamen on whom we could depend, acted as decoy ducks, pretending to
belong to merchant vessels, of which their officer was the master,
and inducing them to engage, for ten gallons of rum and three hundred
dollars, to take the run home. Many were procured in this manner,
and were not undeceived until they found themselves alongside of the
frigate, when their oaths and execrations may be better conceived than
described or repeated.

It may be proper to explain here that the vessels employed in the
timber trade arrive in the month of June, as soon as the ice is
clear of the river, and, if they do not sail by or before the end of
October, are usually set fast in the ice, and forced to winter in the
St Lawrence, losing their voyage, and lying seven or eight months
idle. Aware of this, the sailors, as soon as they arrive, desert, and
are secreted and fed by the crimps, who make their market of them in
the fall of the year by selling them to the captains; procuring for
the men an exorbitant sum for the voyage home, and for themselves a
handsome _douceur_ for their trouble, both from the captain and the
sailor.

We were desired not to take men out of the merchant vessels, but to
search for them in the houses of the crimps. This was to us a source
of great amusement and singular adventure; for the ingenuity in
concealing them was only equalled by the art and cunning exercised in
the discovery of their abodes. Cellars and lofts were stale and out of
use; we found more game in the interior of haystacks, church steeples,
closets under fireplaces where the fire was burning. Some we found
headed up in sugar-hogsheads, and some concealed within bundles of
hoop-staves. Sometimes we found seamen, dressed as gentlemen, drinking
wine and talking with the greatest familiarity with people much
above them in rank, who had used these means to conceal them. Our
information led us to detect thes