f 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 these excusable impositions.

I went into the country, about fifteen miles from Quebec, where I had
heard of a crimp's preserve, and after a tedious search, discovered some
good seamen on the rafters of an outhouse intended only to smoke and
cure bacon; and as the fires were lighted, and the smoke ascending, it
was difficult to conceive a human being could exist there: nor should we
have discove