squadrons. Sunday night,
the 8th of September, in a gale, two of Chauncey's ships sank, with all
hands but sixteen. Two nights later in a squally wind, by the light of
the moon, two more of his slow sailers, unable to keep up with the rest
of the fleet, were snapped up by the English off Niagara with one
hundred captives. Again, on September 27, at eight in the evening, six
miles off Toronto harbor, Chauncey came up with the English, and the
two fleets poured broadsides into each other. Then Yeo's crippled
brigs limped into Toronto harbor, while Chauncey sailed gayly off to
block all connection with Montreal and help to convoy troops {367} from
Niagara down the St. Lawrence for the master stroke of the year. The
way was now clear for the twofold aim of the American staff,--to starve
out Ontario and concentrate all strength in a signal attack on Montreal.

The autumn campaign was without doubt marked by the most comical and
heroic episodes of the war. Wilkinson was to go down the St. Lawrence
from Lake Ontario with eight thousand men to join General Hampton
coming by the way of Lake Champlain with another five thousand men in
united attack against Montreal. November 5 Wilkinson's troops
descended in three hundred flat-boats through the Thousand Islands, now
bleak and leafless and somber in the gray autumn light. It seemed
hardly possible that the few Canadian troops cooped up in Kingston
would dare to pursue such a strong American force, but history is made
up of impossibles. Feeling perfectly secure, Wilkinson's troops
scattered on the river. By November 10, at nine in the morning, half
the Americans had run down the rapids of the Long Sault, and were in
the region of Cornwall, pressing forward to unite with Hampton, where
Chateauguay River came into Lake St. Louis, just above Montreal. The
other half of Wilkinson's army was above the Long Sault, near
Chrysler's Farm. From the outset the rear guard of the advancing
invaders had been harried by Canadian sharpshooters. November 11,
about midday, it was learned that a Canadian battalion of eight hundred
was pressing eagerly on the rear. Chance shots became a rattling
fusillade. Quick as flash the Americans land and wheel face about to
fight, posted behind a stone wall and along a dried gully with
sheltering cliffs at Chrysler's Farm. By 2.30 the foes are shooting at
almost hand-to-hand range. Then, through the powder smoke, the
Canadians break from a mar