magnitude with three
thousand men would have been extremely hazardous, and Colonel Brooke
determined upon a night attack; but, as the night fell, and Brooke was
arranging his men for the contemplated assault, he received a letter
from Admiral Cockburn, informing him that the enemy, by sinking twenty
vessels in the river, (a mode of defence since adopted by Russia,) had
prevented all further access to the ships, and rendered naval
co-operation impossible. Under such circumstances, Brooke withdrew,
without molestation, to his ships.

To the British, the operations on the seaboard, so far, had been as
eminently successful as the operations in Upper Canada had been. In the
northwest, there was one post which did not fall, and the fall of which
was looked upon with indifference by the Americans when Michigan was
recovered, after the defeat of the British fleet on Lake Erie. Contrary
to the expectation of the enemy, that post, which was at
Michillimackinac, had been reinforced early in the spring. Colonel
McDonell, with a detachment of troops, arrived there on the 18th of
May, with provisions and stores for the relief of the garrison. He did
not remain idle when his chief errand was accomplished. In July he sent
off Colonel McKay, of the Indian Department, with 650 men, Michigan
Fencibles, Canadian Volunteers, Officers of the Indian Department, and
Indians, to reduce _Prairie-du-Chien_, on the Mississippi. On the 17th
of July, McKay arrived there. The enemy were in possession of a small
fort, and two block-houses, armed with six guns, while in front of the
fort, in the middle of the river, there was a gun-boat of considerable
size, in which there were no less than fourteen pieces of ordnance.
McKay was superlatively polite. He sent a message to the commander of
the fort, recommending an immediate surrender. But, as McKay had only
one gun, the American promptly refused, and was not a little ironical
in his refusal. McKay, highlander as he was, could stand anything but
irony, and he opened fire with his solitary gun upon the gunboat, by
way of returning the compliment. With this only iron in the fire, he
soon gave such proof of metal that the gun-boat cut her cable and ran
down stream. McKay now threw up a mud battery, and on the evening of
the 19th, he was prepared with his one gun to bombard the fort. The
enemy seeing the earthworks doubtless imagined that McKay's park of
artillery was more considerable than it was, and with