[Footnote 18:  John Warren, the ancestor of the numerous family at Murray Bay of that name.]

[Footnote 19:  Warren, Nairne’s neighbour, had been visiting Quebec apparently for business reasons.]

[Footnote 20:  See Appendix F., p. 286, for this Prayer of Colonel Nairne.]

[Footnote 21:  The inscription to be placed on Nairne’s tomb was long a subject of debate in the family.  Two drafts remain at Murray Bay, both copious in length, and neither like the inscription now to be found at Mount Hermon Cemetery. (See p. 221.) In the taste of the time inscriptions were expected to give a full account of the career of the dead man.  One of these inscriptions speaks of Nairne’s “enjoying as a reward of his services a gift of Land on the River St. Lawrence.  He had alike the merit and the happiness of converting a wild and uninhabited desert into a flourishing colony of above 1000 inhabitants, who regarded him as their Tender Friend and Patriarch.  He died honoured with the esteem of all who knew him.”  The other inscription mentions what, otherwise, we should not have known, that Nairne received a wound on the Plains of Abraham.  It goes on in verse: 

    “Though ’gainst the Foe a dauntless Front he reared,
    Ne’er from his lips was aught assuming heard;
    Modest, though brave; though firm, in manners mild,
    Strong in resolve, though guileless as a child;
    To honor true, in probity correct;
    To falsehood [stern] and urgent to detect;
    To party strange, to calumny a foe;
    The good Samaritan to sons of woe;
    At a late hour he heard the fatal call,
    Obeyed and died, wept and deplored by all.”
]

CHAPTER VI

THOMAS NAIRNE, SEIGNEUR OF MURRAY BAY

His Education in Scotland.—­His winning character.—­He enters the army.—­Malcolm Fraser’s counsels to a young soldier.—­Thomas Nairne’s life at Gibraltar.—­His desire to retire from the army.—­His return to Canada in 1810-11.—­His life at Quebec.—­His summer at Murray Bay, 1811.—­His resolve to remain in the army.—­Beginning of the War of 1812.—­Captain Nairne on Lake Ontario.—­Quebec Society and the proposed flight from danger to Murray Bay.—­Anxiety at Murray Bay.—­The progress of the War.—­An American attack on Kingston.—­Captain Nairne on the Niagara frontier.—­Naval War on Lake Ontario.—­Nairne’s description of a naval engagement.—­Sense of impending disaster at Murray Bay.—­The American advance on Montreal by the St. Lawrence.—­Nairne’s regiment a part of the opposing British force.—­The Battle of Crysler’s Farm.—­Nairne’s death.—­His body taken to Quebec.—­The grief of the family at Murray Bay.—­The funeral.

At his father’s death Thomas Nairne was the only surviving son.  In 1791 the father had written of this boy, born in 1787 and thus only four years old:  “Tom continues very stout but not easy