nxieties on the score of supplies
and provisions while deprived of the free use of the lake, the British
general was now master of the situation. His position rested upon the
Chippewa on one flank, and upon Fort Niagara on the other. From end
to end he had secure communication, for he possessed the river and the
boats, below the falls. By these interior lines, despite his momentary
inferiority in total numbers, he was able to concentrate his forces
upon a threatened extremity with a rapidity which the assailants could
not hope to rival. Fort Niagara was not in a satisfactory condition to
resist battery by heavy cannon; but Izard had none immediately at
hand. Drummond was therefore justified in his hope that "the enemy
will find the recapture of the place not to be easily effected."[338]
His line of the Chippewa rested on the left upon the Niagara. On its
right flank the ground was impassable to everything save infantry, and
any effort to turn his position there would have to be made in the
face of artillery, to oppose which no guns could be brought forward.
Accordingly when Izard, after crossing in accordance with his last
decision, advanced on October 15 against the British works upon the
Chippewa, he found they were too strong for a frontal attack, the
opinion which Drummond himself entertained,[339] while the
topographical difficulties of the country baffled every attempt to
turn them. Drummond's one serious fear was that the Americans, finding
him impregnable here, might carry a force by Lake Erie, and try to
gain his rear from Long Point, or by the Grand River.[340] Though they
would meet many obstacles in such a circuit, yet the extent to which
he would have to detach in order to meet them, and the smallness of
his numbers, might prove very embarrassing.

Izard entertained no such project. After his demonstration of October
15, which amounted to little more than a reconnaisance in force, he
lapsed into hopelessness. The following day he learned by express that
the American squadron had retired to Sackett's Harbor and was
throwing up defensive works. With his own eyes he saw, too, that the
British water service was not impeded. "Notwithstanding our supremacy
on Lake Ontario, at the time I was in Lewiston [October 5-8] the
communication between York and the mouth of the Niagara was
uninterrupted. I saw a large square-rigged vessel arriving, and
another, a brig, lying close to the Canada shore. Not a vessel of ours