The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1886-06-02
CURIOUS MSS.
Discovery of Frenchman's Memoirs of
Our Colonial History.

discovery OF Il trencnHaHS MEMOIRS Oh
Our Colonial History.
The National Library of Paris has
lately received a curious acquisition in
manuscript work entitled Voyage AL
Canada dams lie Nord de rAmerique,
Septentrionale fait depuis Fan 1851
1861, par T. C. B." The author, when
very young and at his wits end for
living, took an opportunity which was
offered him of going to Canada, and
there enlisted in the troupes de la ma
rine, which composed the standing mil
itary force of the colony. As his educa-
ton was much above his new position,
he sometimes acted as secretary to his
commanding officer, and was at length
made storekeeper ut Fort Duquesne,
where, as he ingeniously remarks there
Were good opportunities of making
money without much risk. 1t was u
time when the storekeeper of a military
outpost in Canada rarely failed to make
a modest competence at the expense of
the King. "T. G. b. found himself at
the end of the war in possession of
something more than eighty thousand
francs, nearly all of which melted into
nothing through the depreciation Of
Canadian paper money.
His book would be more valuable if it
were less ambitious. He says that he
made notes of what he saw in Canada,
from which, many years afterward, he
wrote his story; but these notes must
have been of the most imperfect kind.
An exact copy of the whole work is be-
fore me. 1t forms. four hundred and
twenty-eight pages of manuscript, in
Guiding a preface, an index and long
treatise on the Ind ans. In short, it is
book prepared for the press, though it
was never printed. ''T. G. b. would
have done we'll if he had contented him.
self with relating his own experience,
instead of undertaking to recount the
whole course of the war. He did not
write his book till thirty or forty years
after his return to France, and his mem.
DRY. in spite of the notes which he says
| that he kept, often plays him strange
tricks. Thus, he puts the defeat o.
Braddock in 1856 and the removal o
the Acadians in 1854. though they botf
occurred in 1855; and he makes the cap
turc of Fort William Henry and the de
+, ut of Abcrcrombie occur in the sam,
summer. His account of the Indians
and his long descriptions of the animals
of the country are very ineNact. Accord
ing to him, the Canadian porcupin,
darts its quilts at all corners, while tn,
carcajou, or wolverine. has tail sew
eral tines longer than its body.
During the winter of 1858 and 1859 h
returned to Quebec with pockets full o
paper money from his lucrative servic
at Fort Duguesne, and engaged himsel
in marriage to young woman of tn
city, hired II house, furnished it at a cos
of ten thousand francs, and somewha
prematurely installed in it his intende,
bride and mother-in-law. after which h
changed his mind aud broke off tn
match, assigning no reason to his read
ers or to his betrothed, whose disap
pointed parent gave him great troubl
before he could dispossess her of tn
house and furniture. Resuming hi
military life, he was captured in tn
summer of l760 and sent prisoner +
New York. His account of that plac
and what befell him there is interesting
and curious. Being sent to France wit
other prisoners. he rejoined his family
and, at length, growing old, put hi
story upon record, apparently about tn
end of the last century. As historical
evidence, the value of his work is small
Even in the events ofwhich he was him
self "a part, his memory is often at fault
and where he tells of what he did NO