red
and seventy-one, in such a state as to be absolutely inefficient.[447]
Colonel Procter, who soon afterwards relieved him, could on July 18
muster only two hundred and seventy Indians by the utmost exertion,
and by the 26th these had rather decreased.[448] Professing to see no
immediate danger, he still asked for five hundred more regulars. At no
time before Hull recrossed did he have two hundred and fifty.[449]
Under Hull's delay these favorable conditions disappeared. British
re-enforcements, small but veteran, arrived; the local militia
recovered; and the Indians, with the facile changefulness of savages,
passed from an outwardly friendly bearing over to what began to seem
the winning side. Colonel Procter then initiated the policy of
threatening Hull's communications from the lake side. A body of
Indians sent across by him on August 4 defeated an American detachment
marching to protect a convoy from the Maumee. This incident, coming
upon accumulating adverse indications, and coinciding with the bad
news received from Mackinac, aroused Hull to the essential danger of
his situation. August 8 he recrossed to Detroit. August 9 another
vigorous effort was made by the enemy to destroy a detachment sent out
to establish communications with the rear. Although the British were
defeated, the Americans were unable to proceed, and returned to the
town without supplies. In the first of these affairs some more of
Hull's correspondence was captured, which revealed his apprehensions,
and the general moral condition of his command, to an opponent capable
of appreciating their military significance.

Brock had remained near Niagara, detained partly by the political
necessity of meeting the provincial legislature, partly to watch over
what he considered the more exposed portion of his military charge;
for a disaster to it, being nearer the source of British power, would
have upon the fortunes of the West an effect even more vital than a
reverse there would exert upon the East. Being soon satisfied that the
preparations of the United States threatened no immediate action, and
finding that Hull's troops were foraging to a considerable distance
east of Sandwich, along the Thames, he had decided to send against
them a small body of local troops with a number of Indians, while he
himself gathered some militia and went direct by water to Malden. To
his dismay, the Indians declined to assist, alleging their intention
to remain neutral; u