Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 1

Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 1 is a travel work written by Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle, who was an officer of the British army active in Upper Canada.

Very surprising it seems to assert that the Mother Country knows very little about the finest colony which she possesses—and that an enlightened people emigrate from sober, speculative England, sedate and calculating Scotland, and trusting, unreflective Ireland, absolutely and wholly ignorant of the total change of life to which they must necessarily submit in their adopted home.

I recollect an old story, that an old gunner, in an old-fashioned, three-cornered cocked hat, who was my favourite playfellow as a child, used to tell about the way in which recruits were obtained for the Royal Artillery.

The recruiting sergeant was in those days dressed much finer than any field-marshal of this degenerate, railway era; in fact, the Horse Guards always turned out to the sergeant-major of the Royal Military Academy of Woolwich, when that functionary went periodically to the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, to receive and escort the young gentlemen cadets from Marlow College, who were abandoning the red coat and drill of the foot-soldier to become neophytes in the art and mystery of great gunnery and sapping.