lanced with tolerable fairness
between the combatants.

Between Upper and Lower Canada the communication by either land or
water, in summer, was very imperfect, during the war. There was then no
Rideau Canal, connecting Kingston with the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence.
And there was neither the Lachine, the Beauharnois, the Cornwall nor
any other canal by which the dangers and difficulties of the St.
Lawrence rapids might be avoided. Only batteaux and canoes plied
between Upper and Lower Canada. A kind of flat-bottomed boat, of from
35 to 40 feet in length, and about six feet beam in the centre,
carrying from four to four and a half tons, was only available for the
transport of passengers, goods, wares, and merchandise. The boat was
worked by oars, a mast and sail, drag-ropes for towing, and long poles
for pushing them through the rapids, while the bow was kept towards the
shore by a tow line held by the boat's crew or attached to horses. From
ten to twelve days were occupied in the voyage from Montreal or Lachine
to Kingston. To convey stores from Lachine to Kingston, during the war,
required some tact. On one side of the river were the British
batteries, while exactly opposite was an American fort or earthwork,
which as the batteaux poled past Prescott or Brockville, could throw a
round shot or two in their immediate vicinity without very much
trouble. Indeed the Americans did very quietly send one or two cruisers
and privateers to dodge about that marine paradise, the Thousand
Islands, forming the delta of Lake Ontario, and covered to this day
with timber to the water's edge, islands of all sizes and of all forms,
gently rising out of the limpid rippling stream, or boldly standing
forth from the deep blue water, presenting a rugged, rocky moss-clad
front to the wonderstruck beholder. On the 20th of July, some cruisers
from Sackett's Harbour, succeeded in surprising and capturing, at
daybreak, a brigade of batteaux laden with provisions, under convoy of
a gun-boat. They made off with their prize to Goose Creek, which is not
far from Gananoque. At Kingston the loss of the supplies was soon
ascertained, and Lieutenant Scott, of the Royal Navy, was despatched
with a detachment of the 100th regiment, in gun-boats, to intercept the
plunderers. At the lower end of Long Island, he ascertained the retreat
of the enemy, and waited patiently for the morning. In the evening,
still later, a fourth gun-boat with a detachment of the 4