Page:Historical Record of the Fifty-Sixth, Or the West Essex Regiment of Foot.djvu/62

52 days on board of ship. The remainder of the regiment proceeded up the river Saint Lawrence to Sorel, leaving the light company at Three Rivers. On the third of June Lieut.-Colonel William H. Eden arrived with a strong detachment from the depôt companies, and assumed the command of the regiment.

On the 27th of November, the light company, mustering one hundred men, marched for the Madawaska settlement, under Lieut.-Colonel Wm. H. Eden, in consequence of the Americans having offered insults to the warden and magistrates there, and intimated a design to take forcible possession of that part of the country. After traversing two hundred miles of bleak country, covered with snow, in cars, sleighs, &c., the thermometer varying from zero to twenty below, the company arrived at its destination without a casualty.

The head-quarters were removed to Chambly, in June, 1841, and in August, the detachments from the disputed territory, having been relieved by the Sixty-eighth light infantry, arrived at head-quarters.

The period having arrived for the return of the regiment to the United Kingdom, its strength was reduced to three hundred and thirty-three men, by volunteers to remain in the country and to join other corps. In the beginning of July 1842 it proceeded to Quebec, where it embarked in Her Majesty’s troop-ship Resistance, and after an extraordinarily quick passage of seventeen days, arrived at Cork on the 22nd of July. It was joined by the depôt companies on the 3rd of August. In the