little wind, and "Master
Isaac," for example's sake, and "to keep my biceps and fore-arm in good
condition"--as he told the sergeant-major--took his regular spells at
the oar. On arriving at Fort George, Colonel Hunter, Governor and
Commandant, rebuked him for rashly venturing across the lake in an open
boat, "a risk," he said, "never before undertaken."[1] The expedition,
however, was successful, for the deserters were surprised on the
American shore and made prisoners.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Lake Ontario was crossed from Toronto to the wharf at the mouth of
the Niagara River in an ordinary double-scull, lap-strake
pleasure-skiff, by the writer and another Argonaut--Herbert
Bartlett--one unruly morning in the summer of 1872. Though a risky row,
and not previously attempted, it was not regarded as a remarkable feat
by the performers.

[Illustration: VIEW OF QUEENSTON ROAD, ABOUT 1824]

CHAPTER VI.

BRIDLE-ROAD, BATTEAU AND CANOE.

The means for transit through Canada at this time was most primitive,
and not the least of the questions which occupied Brock's thoughts was
the important one of transportation. The lack of facilities for moving
large bodies of men and supplies, in event of war, was as apparent as
was the lack of vessels of force on lake and river.

Between Quebec and Montreal, a distance of sixty leagues, the overland
journey was divided into twenty-four stages, requiring four relays of
horse-caleches in summer and horse-carioles in winter. The time occupied
was three days, and the rate for travellers twenty-five cents a league.
This rough road--which entailed numerous ferries in summer at the Ottawa
and at Lake St. Francis, except for a break of fifty miles--led by
Cornwall and Prescott to Kingston, along which route United Empire
Loyalists twenty years before had established themselves.

A few years prior to Brock's arrival, Governor Simcoe, with the men of
the Queen's Rangers, had cut a roadway through the dense forest between
Prescott and Burlington, at the head of Lake Ontario. From Ancaster, the
then western limit of the U.E. Loyalists' settlement, this road
traversed the picturesque region that surrounded the Mohawk village on
the Grand River, where Joseph Brant, the famous warrior, was encamped
with his Six Nation Indians. From this point it penetrated the rolling
lands of the western peninsula, to the La Trenche (the Thames River),
from whence Lake St. Clair and the Detroit outlet to the