hannel, 35 miles.
The harbour is small but well sheltered. From the north-west runs out a
low point of land, upon which was the dock yard with large store houses,
and all the buildings requisite for such an establishment. Upon this
point there was a strong work called Fort Tompkins, having within it a
blockhouse two stories high: on the land side it was covered by a strong
picketing, in which there were embrasures; at the bottom of the harbour
was the village, containing about seventy houses; and, to the southward
of it, a large barrack, capable of containing 2,000 men, and generally
occupied by the marines belonging to the fleet. Towards the middle of
1814, there were three additional works, Fort Virginia, Fort Chauncey,
and Fort Kentucky, as well as several new blockhouses; and the guns then
mounted upon the different forts exceeded sixty.[52]

The greatest length of the Michigan territory, from south-east to
north-west, is 500 miles, and the number of square miles both of land
and water is estimated at 150,000. The country was then chiefly in the
possession of the Indians, and the white population amounted by the
previous census to about 5,000. It includes two peninsulas of unequal
size, in addition to which are numerous islands, constituent parts of
the territory. The most important of these is Michilimakinack, already
described. This island, while in the former possession of the British,
was the general rendezvous of the North-West traders and the Indians
they supplied. Here the outfits were furnished for the countries of Lake
Michigan and the Mississippi, Lake Superior and the North-West; and here
the returns of furs were collected and embarked for Montreal. Detroit,
the chief town of the territory, is situated on the right bank of the
strait, 10 miles below Lake St. Clair and 28 miles above Lake Erie. It
then contained above two hundred houses, many of brick, and upwards of
1,200 inhabitants. In the rear of the fort was an extensive common,
skirted by boundless and almost impenetrable forests. We learn from
Morse's American Geography, on the acknowledged authority of Governor
Hull, that Fort Detroit, in 1810, was a regular work of an oblong
figure, "covering about an acre of ground. The parapets were about
twenty feet in height, built of earth and sods, with four bastions, the
whole surrounded with pallisadoes, a deep ditch, and glacis. It stood
immediately back of the town, and had strength to withstand a regular