the colours and two
of our small guns in the centre, the baggage well guarded bringing up
the rear, and were moving over a ground which was open and clear for a
mile or two, and for some half mile in breadth, a thick tangled covert
of brushwood and trees on either side of us. After the firing had
continued for some brief time in front, it opened from both sides of the
environing wood on our advancing column. The men dropped rapidly, the
officers in greater number than the men. At first, as I said, these
cheered and answered the enemy's fire, our guns even opening on the
wood, and seeming to silence the French in ambuscade there. But the
hidden rifle-firing began again. Our men halted, huddled up together, in
spite of the shouts and orders of the General and officers to advance,
and fired wildly into the brushwood--of course making no impression.
Those in advance came running back on the main body frightened, and many
of them wounded. They reported there were five thousand Frenchmen and a
legion of yelling Indian devils in front, who were scalping our people
as they fell. We could hear their cries from the wood around as our
men dropped under their rifles. There was no inducing the people to go
forward now. One aide-de-camp after another was sent forward, and never
returned. At last it came to be my turn, and I was sent with a message
to Captain Fraser of Halkett's in front, which he was never to receive
nor I to deliver.

"I had not gone thirty yards in advance when a rifle-ball struck my
leg, and I fell straightway to the ground. I recollect a rush forward
of Indians and Frenchmen after that, the former crying their fiendish
war-cries, the latter as fierce as their savage allies. I was amazed and
mortified to see how few of the whitecoats there were. Not above a score
passed me; indeed there were not fifty in the accursed action in which
two of the bravest regiments of the British army were put to rout.

"One of them, who was half Indian half Frenchman, with mocassins and
a white uniform coat and cockade, seeing me prostrate on the ground,
turned back and ran towards me, his musket clubbed over his head to dash
my brains out and plunder me as I lay. I had my little fusil which
my Harry gave me when I went on the campaign; it had fallen by me and
within my reach, luckily: I seized it, and down fell the Frenchman dead
at six yards before me. I was saved for that time, but bleeding from my
wound and very faint. I swooned