and a vessel on the Mississippi.

Meanwhile seven hundred Americans under Croghan, the
American officer who had repulsed Procter at Fort Stephenson
the year before, were making for Mackinaw itself. They
did some private looting at the Sault, burnt the houses
at St Joseph's Island, and landed in full force at Mackinaw
on the 4th of August. McDouall had less than two hundred
men, Indians included. But he at once marched out to the
attack and beat the Americans back to their ships, which
immediately sailed away. The British thenceforth commanded
the whole three western lakes until the war was over.

The Lake Erie region remained quite as decisively commanded
by the Americans. They actually occupied only the line
of the Detroit. But they had the power to cut any
communications which the British might try to establish
along the north side of the lake. They had suffered a
minor reverse at Chatham in the previous December. But
in March they more than turned the tables by defeating
Basden's attack in the Longwoods at Delaware, near London;
and in October seven hundred of their mounted men raided
the line of the Thames and only just stopped short of
the Grand River, the western boundary of the Niagara
peninsula.

The Niagara frontier, as before, was the scene of desperate
strife. The Americans were determined to wrest it from
the British, and they carefully trained their best troops
for the effort. Their prospects seemed bright, as the