several of the younger of both, who, from their youth,
had been prevented from taking any active share in the
deliberations of the day, stole, successively and
unobservedly, through the large folding doors of the
building, which, owing to the great heat of the weather,
bad been left open. After traversing about fifty yards
of sward, intersecting the high road, which, running
parallel with the river, separated the council hall from
the elevated bank, the officers found, collected in groups
on the extreme verge of this latter and anxiously watching
certain movements in the battery opposite to them, most
of the troops and inferior Indians they had left loitering
there at the commencement of the council. Those movements
were hasty, and as of men preparing to repeat the shot,
the report of which had reached them from, the opposite
extremity of the Island. Presently the forms, hitherto
intermingled, became separate and stationary--an arm of
one was next extended--then was seen to rise a flash of
light, and then a volume of dense smoke, amid which the
loud report found its sullen way, bellowing like thunder
through some blackening cloud, while, from the peculiar
nature of the sound, it was recognized, by the experienced
in those matters, to have proceeded from a shotted gun.

The war in Canada had its beginning in the manner thus
described. They were the first shots fired in that
struggle, and although at an object little calculated to
inspire ranch alarm, still, as the first indications of
an active hostility, they were proportionably exciting
to those whose lot it was thus to "break ground," for