ish interests employed in the fur trade in these distant countries.

"This achievement, effected by the promptitude and judicious
arrangements of Captain Roberts, not only inspired the people with
confidence, and gave a turn to the present campaign fatal to the views
of the United States, by enabling us to maintain our influence among the
Indians of the West, which otherwise must have been lost, but it
essentially contributed to the successful struggle afterwards maintained
against the American arms in Upper Canada. General Hull, after the
capture of his army and the fall of Detroit, in his official despatch
relative to these events, attributes his disasters to the fall of
Mackinac; after the surrender of which, almost every tribe and nation of
Indians, except a part of the Miamis and Delawares, north from beyond
Lake Superior, west from beyond the Mississippi, south from Ohio and the
Wabash, and east from every part of Upper Canada, and from all the
intermediate country, joined in open hostility against the army he
commanded."[197]

"General Hull remained some time inactive, under pretext of making
preparation to prosecute the campaign with vigour; but it was the
fallacious hope of an early insurrection in his favour that lulled him
into a supineness fatal to the safety of his army. Amherstburg lay about
eighteen miles below him, and the mud and picketed fortifications of
that post was not in a condition to make resistance against a regular
siege. The Americans, confident of an easy conquest, had not as yet a
single cannon or mortar mounted, and to endeavour to take it at the
point of the bayonet he thought inexpedient. During this delay his
situation became more and more precarious; three detachments from his
army were, on three successive days, beaten back by a handful of the
41st Regiment and a few Indians, from a bridge over the River Canard,
three miles from Amherstburg, which they endeavoured to seize, in order
to open the route to that port. Another detachment, in attempting to
ford the river (Canard) higher up, was put to flight by a small party of
eighteen or twenty Indians who lay concealed in the grass. The enemy,
panic-struck at their sudden and hideous yell, fled with precipitancy,
leaving their arms, accoutrements, and haversacks. The British sloop of
war _Queen Charlotte_, carrying eighteen twenty-four pounders, lay in
the Detroit river, opposite the mouth of the River Canard, so that it
was impossible