and at Lake St. Francis, except for a break of fifty miles--led by
Cornwall and Prescott to Kingston, along which route United Empire
Loyalists twenty years before had established themselves.

A few years prior to Brock's arrival, Governor Simcoe, with the men of
the Queen's Rangers, had cut a roadway through the dense forest between
Prescott and Burlington, at the head of Lake Ontario. From Ancaster, the
then western limit of the U.E. Loyalists' settlement, this road
traversed the picturesque region that surrounded the Mohawk village on
the Grand River, where Joseph Brant, the famous warrior, was encamped
with his Six Nation Indians. From this point it penetrated the rolling
lands of the western peninsula, to the La Trenche (the Thames River),
from whence Lake St. Clair and the Detroit outlet to the great lakes was
reached by water. Another military road, also built by Simcoe, followed
the old Indian trail through thirty-three miles of forest from York to
Lake Simcoe. This shorter route to Lake Superior enabled the North-West
Fur Company--established by Frobisher and McTavish, of Montreal, in
1776--to avoid canoeing up the Ottawa and its tortuous tributaries. The
batteaux were brought up the St. Lawrence, breaking bulk at certain
"carrying places," then under sail up Lake Ontario to York. From here
the cargoes were hauled by horses over Yonge's military road to Lake
Simcoe, thence by river and stormy Lake Huron to Fort Michilimackinac,
Great Turtle Island--the Mackinaw of to-day--at the head of Lake
Michigan. By this route fifty dollars was saved on every ton of freight
from Ottawa to the middle north. At Mackinaw the goods were reshipped by
bark canoe to the still remoter regions in the further West, where
Spanish pedlars on the southern tributaries of the lower Mississippi
traded with the Akamsea Indians in British goods distributed from
Mackinaw.