that the
forest-leaves, alike free from the influence of the howling hurricane
of summer, and the paralysing and unfathomable snows of winter, cleave,
tame and stirless in their varying tints, to the parent branch; while
the broad rivers and majestic lakes exhibit a surface resembling rather
the incrustation of the polished mirror than the resistless, viewless
particles of which the golden element is composed. It is then that,
casting its satisfied glance across those magnificent rivers, the eye
beholds, as if reflected from a mirror (so similar in production and
appearance are the contiguous shores), both the fertility of cultivated
and the rudeness of uncultivated nature, that every where surround and
diversify the view. The tall and sloping banks, covered with verdure to
the very sands, that unite with the waters lying motionless at their
base; the continuous chain of neat farm-houses (we speak principally of
Detroit and its opposite shores); the luxuriant and bending orchards,
teeming with fruits of every kind and of every colour; the ripe and
yellow corn vying in hue with the soft atmosphere, which reflects and
gives full effect to its abundance and its richness,--these, with the
intervening waters unruffled, save by the lazy skiff, or the light bark
canoe urged with the rapidity of thought along its surface by the
slight and elegantly ornamented paddle of the Indian; or by the sudden
leaping of the large salmon, the unwieldy sturgeon, the bearded
cat-fish, or the delicately flavoured maskinonge, and fifty other
tenants of their bosom;--all these contribute to form the foreground of
a picture bounded in perspective by no less interesting, though perhaps
ruder marks of the magnificence of that great architect--Nature, on
which the eye never lingers without calm; while feelings, at once
voluptuous and tender, creep insensibly over the heart, and raise the
mind in adoration to the one great and sole Cause by which the
stupendous whole has been produced.

Such a day as that we have just described was the ---- of September,
1763, when the chief portion of the English garrison of Detroit issued
forth from the fortifications in which they had so long been cooped up,
and in the presumed execution of a duty undeniably the most trying and
painful that ever fell to the lot of soldier to perform. The heavy dull
movement of the guns, as they traversed the drawbridge resembled in
that confined atmosphere the rumbling of low and