_.

It is stated by gentlemen of intelligence at Lewistown, that
the government of Canada have in their employment, under pay,
about 250 Indians, armed complete: a part of them are mounted.

Brigadier-General William Wadsworth, from Genesee, commands
the troops on our frontiers. His aids are Major Adam Hoops and
Major W. H. Spencer. His head quarters are now at Lewistown.
It is impossible to state the precise number of troops under
his command, because the militia ordered on the lines are
returning, and the companies composing the regiments under his
command have not all arrived; but from what we learn, there
are in regular troops, volunteers, and detached militia, above
4,000 stationed at Rock, Lewistown, Youngstown, and Fort
Niagara. The troops are in excellent health, in good spirits,
and well supplied. They appear quite impatient for want of
employment. There has been some firing from the sentries on
both sides of the river.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: At this time, the British regular force in the Canadas
consisted of the 8th, 41st, 49th, and 100th regiments, a small
detachment of artillery, the 10th Royal Veteran Battalion, and the
Canadian, Newfoundland, and Glengary Fencibles; amounting, in the whole,
to 4,450 men. These were distributed along the different posts from the
telegraph station, about 250 miles below Quebec, to St. Joseph's, but so
unequally divided, that, in the Upper Province, whose front extends to
nearly 1,300, out of the 1,700 miles, there were but 1,450 men.--_James'
Military Occurrences_.]

[Footnote 55: In answer to Major-General Brock's suggestions on the
subject, see page 127.]

CHAPTER IX.

The American government, in anticipation of its declaration of war, had
detached from the state of Ohio to the Michigan territory an army of
about 2,500 men, under the command of Brigadier-General Hull, who, said
President Madison in his message to congress, "possessing discretionary
authority to act offensively, passed into Canada with a prospect of easy
and victorious progress." The enemy evidently confided in the very
limited defensive means of the Upper Province, and in the impossibility
of its receiving early assistance from the mother country. They relied
also on the supposed disaffection of many of its inhabitants, and they
expected confidently that, weak and divided, it would fall an easy prey
to the invaders; but t