“In their feverish exultations,
    In their triumph and their yearning,
    In their passionate pulsations,
    In their words among the nations
    The Promethean fire is burning.”

   “But the glories so transcendent
    That around their memories cluster,
    And on all their steps attendant,
    Make their darken’d lives resplendent
    With such gleams of inward lustre.”

CHAPTER XII.

Soldiers and Swiss.

Many Canadian Settlements have had a military origin.  It was considered a wise, strategic move in the game of national defence when Colonel Butler and his Rangers, after the Treaty of Paris, were settled along the Niagara frontier, and when Captain Grass and other United Empire Loyalists took up their holdings at Kingston and other points on the boundary line along the St. Lawrence.  The town of Perth was the headquarters of a military settlement in Central Canada.  Traces of military occupation can still be found in such Highland districts of Canada as Pictou, Glengarry and Zorra, in which last named township the enthusiastic Celt in 1866 declared that perhaps the Fenians would take Canada, but they could never take Zorra.  Numerous examples can be found all through Canada where there is an aroma of valor and patriotism surrounding the old army officer or the families of the veterans of the Napoleonic or Crimean wars.

The settlement of the De Meuron soldiers opposite Fort Douglas gave some promise of a military flavor to Selkirk Settlement.  But as we shall see it was an ill-advised attempt at colonization.  It was a mistake to settle some hundred or more single men as these soldiers were without a woman among them, as Lord Selkirk was compelled to do.  To these soldier-colonists he gave lands along the small winding river now called the Seine, which empties into Red River opposite Point Douglas.  Many of the De Meurons spoke German, and hence for several years the little stream on which they lived was called German Creek.  The writings of the time are full of rather severe criticism of these bello-agricultural settlers.  Of course no one expects an old soldier to be of much use to a new country.  He is usually a lazy settler.  His habits of life are formed in another mould from that of the farm.  He is apt to despise the hoe and the harrow and many even of the half-pay officers who came to hew out a home in the Canadian forest, never learned to cut down a tree or to hold a plough, though it may be admitted that they lived a useful life in their sons and daughters, while the culture and decision of character of the old officer or sturdy veteran were an asset of great value to the locality in which he settled.