few companies of the 42nd Highlanders, who were also
under arms, and so distributed as to take the enemy most
at an advantage. Suddenly they withdrew and without other
indication of their purpose than what had been expressed
in their manner, and carried off the missing ball. Their
design had been discovered and made known by means of
significant warnings to the Governor by an Indian woman
who owed a debt of gratitude to his family, and was
resolved, at all hazards, to save them.

On the same day the same artifice was resorted to at
Michilimackinac, and with the most complete success.
There was no guardian angel there to warn them of danger,
and all fell beneath the rifle, the tomahawk, the war-club,
and the knife, one or two of the traders--a Mr. Henry
among the rest--alone excepted.

It was not long after this event when the head of the
military authorities in the Colony, apprised of the fate
of these captured posts, and made acquainted with the
perilous condition of Fort Detroit, which was then reduced
to the last extremity, sought an officer who would
volunteer the charge of supplies from Albany to Buffalo,
and thence across the lake to Detroit, which, if possible,
he was to relieve. That volunteer was promptly found in
my maternal grandfather, Mr. Erskine, from Strabane, in
the North of Ireland, then an officer in the Commissariat
Department. The difficulty of the undertaking will be
obvious to those who understand the danger attending a
journey through the Western wilderness, beset as it was