At Fort Sorel is stationed a garrison, a detachment of the seventieth regiment, commanded by a sergeant; an artillery detachment which was moving to Montreal, tied its sloop to our steam-boat, and came on board; the artillerymen mostly intoxicated. Towards evening, we learned that the sloop contained three boxes of gunpowder, which caused us a great deal of uneasiness. The danger was so much the greater, as the sparks were continually flying from the pipe of the steam-boat, which the wind drove towards the sloop. I was one of the first who received the information, and immediately gave the alarm. All the passengers agreed in persuading the captain during this rainy and stormy night to remove the sloop some distance from our boat, and place in it an officer and three of the least intoxicated artillerymen. The night was dark, and we were compelled to cast anchor and remain till morning.
The next morning the weather was still cloudy and rainy; the storm was particularly strong, and the wind ahead. The machinery was too weak to make any progress. We therefore saw Montreal three hours before we could reach it; the current particularly was so strong between Montreal and the Isle of St. Helen, that in spite of the machinery we were driven backwards. At last we were obliged to draw up the boat by aid of six oxen, two horses, and ten men. The Lady Sherbrook, however, is one of the oldest steam-boats on the St. Lawrence, and the captain himself confessed that she was so rotten that she was not worth repairing, and will soon be condemned. About 4 o'clock in the afternoon, after we had been forty-six hours on our journey, which took but twenty-six hours going down, we were landed at Montreal. The battery on the Island of St. Helen saluted us with twenty-one guns. The first information we received was, that fifty houses were burned down yesterday in the suburbs of the town, and that this misfortune fell mostly upon the poorer class, whose houses were not insured.
Mr. Bingham, from Philadelphia, who married a rich heiress here, and turned Catholic to get possession of her estate, gave a ball to-day, in honour of the first birth-day of his only daughter, and politely invited our company. We accepted the invitation, and rode to the ball at 9 o'clock. He was twenty-four years of age, and his wife nineteen; has many friends, because his cellar is well filled, and has the talent to spend his money liberally among the people. We found assembled in his rich and tastefully furnished halls the whole fashionable world of Montreal. They mostly dance French contra dances, commonly called Spanish dances. To the contra dances, in honour of the officers of the seventieth regiment, who are the favourite young gentlemen, they have adopted tedious Scotch melodies; to the Spanish dances they played German waltzes. The native ladies conversed in very soft Canadian bad French, not even excepting our handsome landlady. I took particular notice of a Miss Ermatinger, the daughter of a Swiss, and an Indian woman, on account of her singular but very beautiful Indian countenance. She was dressed in the best taste of all, and danced very well. Indeed there was a great deal of animation at this ball, as well as a great deal of luxury, particularly a profusion of silver plate and glass in the house of Mr. Bingham, whose sister is the wife of the banker, Baring, of London.