r to
storm Fort Niagara, whose capture might have changed the entire
situation, but alas! what of his instructions?

He called out more militia, though he had only a few tents and many of
the men were drilling without shoes. One hundred Tuscaroras under Chief
Brant answered his summons. He divided his augmented Niagara force into
four divisions--at Fort Erie 400 men, at Fort Chippewa 300, at Queenston
300, at Fort George 500. Of these, 900 were militia.

The rattle of the matchlock was as familiar as cockcrow. Every man
became in fact, if not in deed, a volunteer. If the musket was not
strapped to the tail of the plough, it leaned against the
snake-fence--loaded. The goose-step, the manual and platoon took the
place of the quadrille. Every clearing became a drill-hall, every log
cabin an armoury. Many of the militia were crack shots, with all the
scouting instincts of the forest ranger. In the barrack-square, in
scarlet, white and green, the regulars drilled and went through wondrous
evolutions with clock-work precision--fighting machinery with the
tenacity of the bull-dog, though lacking the craft of the woods that had
taught the volunteer the value of shelter and the wisdom of dwelling on
his aim.

Apart, stolid and silent, but interested spectators, lounged the dusky
redmen, forever sucking at their _pwoighun-ahsin_ (stone pipes) and
making tobacco from the inner bark of red-willow wands, watching and
wondering. The foot soldiers carried fire-locks, flints and cartridge
boxes. These smooth-bore flint-locks had an effective range of less than
100 yards, and could be discharged only once a minute. Very different to
the modern magazine rifle, which can discharge twenty-five shots in a
minute and kill at 4,200 yards, while within 2,000 yards it is accurate
and deadly. The mounted men were armed with sabres and ponderous
pistols.

Our hero addressed the militia. The enemy, he told them, intended to lay
waste the country. "Let them be taught," he said, "that Canadians would
never bow their necks to a foreign yoke." As the custodian of their
rights, he was trying to preserve all they held dear. He looked to them
to repel the invaders.

Brock was placed in a most peculiar position, for while the passive
Prevost was still instructing him--nearly three weeks _after_ the
declaration of war--"to take no offensive measures, as none would be
taken by the United States Government," General Hull, with a force of
2,500 tried s