such extraordinary energy that the troops were in hand in two days.

De Salaberry was a perfect type of the old French-Canadian military
gentry, a stock of men of whom very little remains, a breed of leaders
of, on the whole, more vigorous forms, more active temperaments, than
the average--descendants inheriting the qualities of the bravest and
most adventurous individuals of former times. They were the natural
result of the feudal _régime_, with which they have passed away.
Though a gentry, they were a poor one, possessed of little else than
quantities of forest lands. The officers of the Voltigeurs were
selected out of the same class, united with a number of English of
similar stamp. De Salaberry himself was born in the little cottage
manor-house of Beauport, near Quebec, on the 19th of Nov., 1778.[11]
Taking to soldiering like a duck to water when very young, he enrolled
as volunteer in the 44th. At sixteen, the Duke of Kent, who was then
in Canada, and delighted in friendly acts towards the seigneurs, got
him a commission in the 60th, with which regiment he left at once for
the West Indian Isle of Dominica. There he saw terrible service, for
all the men of his battalion except three were killed or wounded
during the seige of Fort Matilda. Nevertheless, the young fellow kept
gay. "Our uniforms," he wrote to his father, "cost very dear; but I
have received £40, and with that I am going to give myself what will
make a fine figure." "This fine large boy of sixteen years," says
Benjamin Sulte in his History of the French-Canadians, "strong as a
Hercules ... with smiling face ... made a furore at parties.... As he
was never sick, they employed him everywhere. Fevers reduced his
battalion to 200 men, but touched not him." Though so young, he was
charged with covering the evacuation of Fort Matilda.[12]

The Duke of Kent, who was commanding at Halifax, kept a friendly eye