superiors, and yet arrogate to themselves a
claim to be considered gentlemen and men of honor and independence--it
has, I repeat, been assumed that the feat attributed to him in
connection with the flag-staff of the fort was impossible. No one who
has ever seen these erections on the small forts of that day would
pronounce the same criticism. Never very lofty, they were ascended at
least one-third of their height by means of small projections nailed to
them for footholds for the artillerymen, frequently compelled to clear
the flag lines entangled at the truck; therefore a strong and active
man, such as Wacousta is described to have been, might very well have
been supposed, in his strong anxiety for revenge and escape with his
victim, to have doubled his strength and activity on so important an
occasion, rendering that easy of attainment by himself which an
ordinary and unexcited man might deem impossible. I myself have knocked
down a gate, almost without feeling the resistance, in order to escape
the stilettos of assassins.

The second objection is to the narrowness attributed in the tale to the
river St. Clair. This was done in the license usually accorded to a
writer of fiction, in order to give greater effect to the scene
represented as having occurred there, and, of course, in no way
intended as a geographical description of the river, nor was it
necessary. In the same spirit and for the same purpose it has been
continued.

It will be seen that at the termination of the tragedy enacted at the
bridge, by which the Bloody Run was in those days crossed, that the
wretched wife of the condemned soldier pronounced a curse that could
not, of course, well be fulfilled in the course of the tale. Some few
years ago I published in Canada--I might as well have done so in
Kamschatka--the continuation, which was to have been dedicated to the
last King of England, but which, after the death of that monarch, was
inscribed to Sir John Harvey, whose letter, as making honorable mention
of a gallant and beloved brother, I feel it a duty to the memory of the
latter to subjoin.

GOVERNMENT HOUSE, FREDERICTON, N.B.,

Major Richardson, Montreal.

November 26th, 1839.

"Dear Sir;--I am favored with your very interesting
communication of the 2nd instant, by which I learn
that you are the brother of two youths whose gallantry
and merits--and with regard to one of them, his
sufferings--during the late war, exc