ge of Captain Dobbs,
and the other under Colonel Scott, consisting of his own regiment, the
103rd, and two companies of the royals. Colonel Fischer's column gained
possession of the enemy's batteries at the point assigned for its
attack, two hours before daylight, but the other columns were behind
time, having got entangled by marching too near the lake, between the
rocks and the water, and the enemy being now on the alert, opened a
heavy fire upon the leading column of the second division which threw
it into confusion. Fischer's column had in the meanwhile almost
succeeded in capturing the fort. They had actually crept into the main
fort through the embrasures, in spite of every effort to prevent them.
Nay, they turned the guns of the fort upon its defenders, who took
refuge in a stone building, in the interior, and continued to resist.
This desperate work continued for nearly an hour, when a magazine blew
up, mangling most horribly nearly all the assailants within the fort.
Of course there was a panic. The living, surrounded by the dying and
the dead, the victims of accident, believed that they stood upon an
infernal machine, to which the match had only to be placed. No effort
could rally men impressed with such an idea. There was a rush, as it
were, from inevitable death. Persuasion fell on the ears of men who
could not hear. Persuasion fell upon the senses of men transfixed with
one idea. Persuasion would have been as effectual in moving yonder
blackened corpse into healthy life, as in moving to a sense of duty to
themselves, men who could see nothing but the deadness around them, and
whose minds saw only, under all, the blackness of immediate
destruction. Those who were victors, until now, literally rushed from
the fort. The reinforcements of the British soon arrived, but the
explosion had again given the defenders heart, and they too, having
received reinforcements, after some additional straggling, for the
mastery, the British withdrew. The British loss amounted to 157 killed,
308 wounded, and 186 prisoners, among the killed being Colonels Scott
and Drummond. The American loss was 84 in killed, wounded and missing.

A reinforcement was shortly afterwards obtained from Lower Canada. The
6th and the 82nd regiments came in time to compensate for previous
losses, but General Drummond did not consider it expedient to make
another attack. His purpose was equally well, and perhaps better
obtained by keeping the whole Am