Patrick Campbell 1791

We present here some excerpts from an important collection of impressions and items of interest from a traveler who traveled much of North America between 1791-1792. The author, Patrick Campbell, wrote the book in the hopes of ascertaining whether emigration by Scottish Highlanders was warranted to the parts of the Continent that he would visit. Its an amazing narrative of a voyage that had every bit of excitement that one would expect from such a venture at this time: weather, food challenges, interesting encounters, and a dog! Unlike Sir George Head who would describe the scenery and the terrain as much as the people, Patrick Campbell spends much of his narrative on dialoguing with the people about the bread winning capabilities of the land that he visits. In this way it is truly informative of the ways that people were generating a meager existence out of harsh and sometimes inhospitable terrain. Very little is known about Patrick Campbell, except that he was a solider in the British 116^th Regiment after the Seven Years War. We reproduce here a picture of him as a traveler painted by the American artist Copley, and reproduced in the Champlain Society reprint of his book.

Figure Patrick Campbell, In Traveling Dress, by Copley. Reproduced from Champlain Society Reprint of His Book. Annotated by Langton and Ganong. 1937.

Most of the book is spent describing parts of New Brunswick – a great addition to our understanding of what was happening so early in the new Province. Campbell met a number of important people to us, including Governor Thomas Carleton but also Lieutenant Dugald Campbell from the KAR and most importantly, Captain Isaac Attwood of the KAR and Philip Long’s Captain for quite some time in the Savannah, Georgia. We will reproduce these passages to glean some understanding of who was Attwood. Campbell also met David Higginbotham in the Miramichi, and then traveled to Quebec and stayed at Higginbotham’s old house at the head of Lake Temiscouata. It was falling in disrepair as it seemed to have been abandoned. As we know from the previous section, Higginbotham was actually trying to sell his lands at Lake Temiscouata. Please enjoy!

“A Mr. Higginbotham, who had been a long time an Indian trader in the Magdelen mountain[1], which bounds lower Canada and this province, told me he had once left a pack of skins in a forsaken solitary hut, which the Carcaseu found out, untied the packages, and carried off every one of them.

That, to mislead and deceive the owner, he raised the snow in heaps, he supposes in a thousand parts about the place. That he, Mr. Higginbotham, ripped up a great many of these hopes of finding the skins concealed under them, but never yet found so much as one of them.

This strange mischievous creature is a great pest to the Indians, who are expert enough in making traps of various constructions, sufficient to hold all sorts of wild animals that frequent the corner they happen to be in; [2]yet should they make a chain of traps ten miles long, and that the Carcaseu fell in with any one of them, he will range about until he demolishes one and all of them, and seems uneasy while one is remaining. He hides the sticks of which they are composed, in such a manner that it is the next think to a miracle to fin out any one of them; and how he can remove logs of a considerable weight, is no less surprising.

The Indians in New Brunswick and Lower Canada call him the Black Devil; and as an instance of their knowledge of his bad tricks, when a merchant cheats or circumvents them in a bargain, they call him a Carcaseu.”[3]

I was now to encounter a journey, the dangers and difficulties of which would stagger many, more accustomed than I was to traveling in this country, and inured to the ways necessary, through impenetrable forest, a savage wilderness, and mountains covered with snow; and what I deemed little better was, that I had to go from 270 miles to 300 miles, by water, through broad and rapid streams, broken with stones and rocks, which mad it both unsafe and intricate to get up against them in a small birch canoe, that could hardly carry my Dog besides the poleman, or navigator, and myself…

October 8.On our way this day, both sides of the river continued closely inhabited; …Towards evening the land became more precipitate, and the mountains descended to the water’s edge. We put up at a place called Paey York, in which a Major Murray[4] had once resided. He had built a dwelling house, barn, and a large grist and saw mill, and made several other improvements; but as the land was so poor as to yield no crop worth while without manure, he left it, and had let his mills at L. 50 per annum …

October 9. The river, for a considerable part of our way this morning, was entirely confined with mountains, and there were no settlements; but further on it opened again, and the country was inhabited. Towards noon we fell in with a large party of Indians, who were encamped on the banks of the river, making canoes, and preparing for going down the river with their wives and families. Many of the daughters were handsome buxom wenches, with lively expressive features, all with their hair tied, and better dressed in their fashion than any I had yet seen. The Engineer’s canoe being a little leaky, we stopped here and got it repaired. Many of the Indians spoke French, but scarcely a word of English; the engineer conversed with them in the former language, as did my friend George McGregor in their own tongue. The said they were going to school, that is to those parts where schoolmasters are placed and appointed, to teach such of the Indian children as their parents choose to send. The master’s salaries are paid by government, and the children are closthe and maintained at the expense of government. There is one of these schools at the grand lake behind Majorville, another in the Kanabicaces, and a third higher up the river, behind a captain Artwood’s[5] plantation. While the families choose to remain with their children, they are also fed and clothed in the same way. Every Indian gets two suits of clothes, and two blankets per annum, a pound of tobacco and pipe per wee, and as much provisions, consistent of flour, Indian corn, beans, puce, and pork, as serves him; yet notwithstanding their being thus amply provided, no sooner does the fall of the year, and the hunting season commence, than off they set, and range the wilderness far and near in quest of game. It is indeed their harvest, on which they wholly rely for support; but when at school, they, like many inconsiderate and idle scholars, do not pay the proper attention, but with this difference, that the latter are made to apply by the birch, but the former are urged by hunger only. I was told that some of the most expert of them at hunting and fishing made shift to draw from twenty to thirty guineas in some seasons for peltry; and as government supply them with clothes, had they common prudence or management, (but of either they have non,) they might live in affluence, and in as much ease as people of their wandering disposition could wish, but their profits mostly go in rum, of which they are immoderately fond.

This morning, and the preceding night, we met about three score of their canoes, loaded with their families and furs, going down the river, as they said, to school. After staying for more than an hour with them, and having got our canoes made tight, we proceeded on our way. The river was here so rapid, and ran with such amazing force, that we were obliged to come out and walk on land, before the canoes could be either dragged or poled up against the stream at the edge of the water; and if there had been no such necessity I should have deemed it unsafe and dangerous to continue in them[6]. Cold showers of snow and sleet came on. We put up at a captain Artwood’s[7], an American gentleman, a factious little fellow, who gave us a great many songs of his own composing, and repeated many agreeable passages of Thomson’s Seasons and other poems. Captain Artwood affirmed, what I had been often told by others, that this was the best country of any for grass, and inferior to none for grain; that the cattle often preferred pasturing in the woods, to the most luxuriant open fields; and that he himself had an hundred pounds of tallow from an Ox fed in the woods. This gentleman’s farm is situated on a broad point of land, where the river forms an obtuse angle, on which the French had a fort[8] before the British got possession of their province, and had cleared a considerable space about it. The remains of the pickets and ramparts are still to be easily discovered. The cause of the great rapids already mentioned, I judged to be a rise of one foot in ten, for the space of a mile, which occasioned their immense velocity. In crossing a large and deep pool at the foot of the rapids, were very near being overset in the middle of the stream, by inadvertency. In paddling through, I happened to lean too much to one side, which brought the water to edge with the gunnel. My conductor aroused my attention, by hastily calling to me to take care, and very alertly laid his whole weight on the opposite side, otherwise we must have gone to the bottom. Such inadvertencies often prove fatal in those miserable small vessels which float as light as a cork on the surface of the water.

From captain Artwood’s we set out by daylight, and had gone a few miles when the country against became open, the mountains were spread out at a considerable distance, and the river widened. Several islands appeared. We put up and breakfasted at one Sheriff’s who kept a public house. …

Figure – Patrick Campbell, Travels in North America, Plan of An American New Cleared Farm - Page 81. Champlain Society Reprint. 1931.

Note – Journal has no exact date at this point but it is likely October 17-18.

“We soon came up to a Fall[9] which obliged us to land and drag our canoes on shore on the rocks, and enter the river above it. We encamped in the evening in the woods, and lay under the canoes, to shelter us from a considerable quantity of snow that fell through night.

“The river being now much narrower, smooth, and sheltered from the wind by the high wood on each side, we made great way. …”

“I remarked in this day’s route the dreadful effects of the thunder on the woods. I had seen in several other places plots of trees said to have been struck down, but at such a distance from me that I could not observe it accurately myself; but I was here within a few yards of the spot it had struck upon, which is a circular space of about twenty yards diameter, where the trees grew very strong, and as close as they well could, but not one was left standing. About two-thirds of them were torn up by the roots, the others broken to shivers, the stumps split down to the ground, and the splinters driven to a great distance. I should imagine the extraordinary force that occasioned this devastation to trees so strong, and to so many of them at once, would have even split rocks, had these been in its way.

In passing up the river, we saw large shoals of fine Trouts of about a pound weight each; they did not seem to be shy, as they would pass up and down, quite close to the canoes, without being in the least disturbed, and if we had had spears, or hooks and lines, I suppose we might have killed as many as we pleased.

Figure - Campbell, Travels in North America, Birch Canoe Poled Amongst Rocks and Stones Against A Rapid Stream, Champlain Society Reprint. 1931., page 92a.

We now arrived at the lower end of the lake Tamisquata, which is supposed to be from thirty to forty miles long, and one broad in the straitest part; it is a spacious sheet of water, of many broad and deep bays. As far as my eye could reach on each side, I could see nothing by forests of pines of the loftiest kind, interspersed here and there with clumps of the stateliest birches imaginable, that might supply the British navy for ever.

Here I observed a great number of aspen trees, vulgarly called the quaking ash, because of the singular quality of the leaves keeping in almost perpetual motion. The Indian name of it is woman’s tongue, for they say if one leaf be set in motion all the rest begin, and then there is no such thing as stopping them.

This province of New Brunswick is supposed to be 300 miles square; and if a bird’s eye view were taken of it, it would be seen that the thousandth part of it is not clear, but covered with wood or water. At the end of this lake we threw away our poles and took to our paddles. We had fifteen miles to go upon the lake before we could get to the Grand Portage; and to shorten the way we had to cross the lake twice, and to pass from point to point, lest we should be overtaken by any gust of wind, as a gust would soon have overset us. We were all obliged to work hard, so that the paddle was scarcely out of my hand for these fifteen miles. Though we pushed on for an hour or two of night, in hopes of reaching the Portage, we could not make it out, and the wind having got up were obliged to land.

We encamped on a very cold point, being so late that we could not see the choose a proper situation to pass the night in. When day light appeared next morning we way the Portage, which was not a mile off. Here we landed, drew up our canoes, breakfasted at a house which had been built by one Heginbottom[10], and in which he readied for the conveniency of trading with the Indians; but having left it some time ago, it is now in a decayed state. We struck up a fire, and after refreshing ourselves, and a packing our provision and little baggage, set out; and on October 20^th ascended the Magdalen mountains, which bound the provinces of Lower Canada and New Brunswick; and though they are by no means high from their base, are yet, by my calculation, three miles perpendicular above the level of the sea; and which great height occasions, at this early season of the year, more than their high latitude, their being covered with snow and frost. The distance from this, or the length of the Grand Portage[11] to be the foot of the small river De Cop, where it enters the great river St. Laurence, is reckoned to be but forty miles; while that of the city St John, from whence I had come, is about 400; so that the declivity to the north must be ten to one steeper than the slope to the south, and the mountains on the St Laurence side must be piled one above another to this distance; which indeed I found to be the case on my traveling through them.”

[1] From a footnote in Campbell, Travels in North America, we learn that: “The name Magdalen Mountains for this watershed is not found elsewhere. In the height ‘three miles perpendicular above the level fo the sea’, ascribed to these mountains, we have another of Campbell’s incomprehensible errors with figures. The portage road rises in few places, if any, above 1400 feet, though some summits off the route are 300 or 400 feet higher. The actual watershed lies much nearer to Lake Temiscouata than to the St. Lawrence. (W. F. Ganong)”., page 102.

[2] Campbell, ibid., Footnote on page 71. “Commonly spelled Carcajou, with variants, the Wolverine, allied not with the Cats but the Weasels. It has long been extinct in the province, where it is remembered as the ‘Injun Devil’. (W. F. Ganon)”.

[3] Campbell, ibid.., page 72-73.

[4] Campbell, idid., Footnotes. On Paey, “An evident misprint for Pacy (hard c) York, and that a bad phonetic spelling for Pecayauk of the Engineer’s own map, now Pokiok. (W. F. Ganon)”. And on Murray, “Major Daniel Murray of the King’s American (Loyalist) Dragoons, which settled in Prince William parish. (W. F. Ganong).”

[5] This is a reference to Captain Isaac Attwood, of the King’s American Regiment. The Indian School at “Artwood’s” was at Woodstock and the other one at “Majorville” was at Maugerville on the Grand Lake behind Sheffield. The Schools, we learn from Ganong, were founded and maintained not by the New Brunswick government, but by “a beneveloent Society in England, called the New England Company, for the education and civilization of the American Indians.”

[6] Footnote from Campbell, ibid., page 85. “The so-called Meductic Falls, four miles above Pokiok. Its quarter-mile of violent rapids however cannot produce a drop of more than twenty feet instead of the 500 which Campbell calculates. Like errors of elevation appear later in the book. (W. F. Ganon).”

[7] Footnote from Campbell, ibid., page 85-86. “Isaac Attwood, a Loyalist from New Jersey. He had served in the King’s American Regiment which was settled in the vicinity (Raymond’s winslow Papers, p. 222). His grant was at the mouth of the Eel river, eight miles above the Meductic River, though Campbell places his farm three miles higher at Meductic Point. (W. F. Ganong).”

[8] Footnote from Campbell, ibid., page 86. “The Fort at Meductic was not French but Indian. It stood at the end of the a very important protage route leading via upper Eel River to the St. Croix and Penobscot waters – the route by which the French and Indians went to attack the New England settlements. (W. F. Ganong).”

[9] Footnote from Campbell, ibid., page 99. “this rocky rapid, formerly called Little Falls, on the Madawaska where it joins the Saint John, is now obliterated by a concrete dam connected with a pulp mill. Here stands the thriving town of Edmundston. Midway on this river Campbell passed the present boundary between the provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec. (W. F. Ganong).”

[10] Campbell here spells phonetically the name of the Trader, Higginbotham, who we learned from the Journal in earlier pages, he had met in the Miramichi.

[11] Footnote in Campbell, ibid., page 102. “The Grand Portage, about 36 miles long, began in the westerly bend of Lake Temiscouata near the mouth of the Cabano river. Then it ran west by north along the general course of the present highway, reaching the St. Lawrence river at Notre Dame du Portage, west of R. du Loup. It was not an Indian portage (theirs passed by the touladi and also the Ashberish to Trois Pistoles), but was explored by the French to facilitate river communication via the Saint John with Acadia, and was made a road by the English in 1783. (W. F. Ganong).”

01/26/07

Patrick Campbell – Travels in North America