e attempt upon Kingston was
quickly abandoned owing to a false report that the garrison had been
largely increased and it was determined to limit the operations of the
"Army of the Centre" in the first instance to the reduction of the two
latter places.

On the 17th of March, Major General Morgan Lewis, who had been appointed
to the command of the division on the Niagara, arrived at Buffalo
attended by a numerous staff. At noon of the same day, the batteries at
Black Rock began firing across the river and continued the cannonade
with little intermission until the evening of the 18th. A few houses
were destroyed and seven soldiers killed or wounded near Fort Erie.
Three of the American guns were dismounted by the British batteries. A
week later the bombardment was resumed with even less result.

York was taken without much difficulty on the 27th April, but it cost
the assailants their most promising general and between three and four
hundred of their best troops. They ascertained on that occasion that
they still had many warm sympathizers in that part of the Province. A
letter from an officer who accompanied this expedition, published in the
_Baltimore Whig_ at the time, states that "our adherents and friends in
Upper Canada suffer greatly in apprehension or active misery. Eighteen
or twenty of them who refused to take the oath of allegiance lived last
winter in a cave or subterraneous hut near Lake Simcoe. Twenty-five
Indians and whites were sent to take them but they killed eighteen of
the party and enjoyed their liberty until lately when being worn out
with cold and fatigue, they were taken and put in York jail whence we
liberated them." Michael Smith corroborates this account in some
respects. He relates that twelve days after the battle of Queenston
Colonel Graham, on Yonge Street, ordered his battalion to assemble that
a number might be drafted to go to Fort George. Forty of them did not
come but went out to Whitchurch township which was nearly a wilderness
and joined thirty more fugitives that were already there. Some men who
were home for a few days from Fort George offered to go and bring them
in but as they were not permitted to take arms they failed and the
number of fugitives increased by the first of December to 300. When on
my way to Kingston to obtain a passport, I saw about fifty of these
people near Smith's Creek in the Newcastle District on the main road
with fife and drum beating for recruits and huzz