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The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 by Walter R. Nursey
page 60 of 176 (34%)
double-spoke affairs, without any circular rim. A stage-coach also ran
between Queenston and Fort Erie, the first in Upper Canada. For one
dollar the passenger could travel twenty-five miles.

At Fort Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, Brock embarked in
mid-August in a government schooner. He wished to familiarize himself
with the upper water-ways. He made the long trip from Quebec to York,
and thence to Niagara, Amherstburg, Detroit, Sandwich and return
overland to Fort George, within two months--record time. Dobson
accompanied his master. Brock was silent as to his impressions, but
admitted he was convinced that the water route for a military expedition
was the only practical one, and that Mackinaw, held by the United
States, was the portal and key to the western frontier in case of
invasion. He crossed overland through the "bad woods" and open plains to
the Point of Pines, where batteaux and canoes awaited him. From thence
he proceeded along the north shore of Lake Erie until abreast of the
Miami, a confluent of the Ohio River, on the south shore, then turned
northward up the Detroit River, twenty-five miles farther, reaching
Amherstburg--called Malden by the Americans--250 miles from Fort Erie.
Here, after consulting with Colonel St. George, he inspected the battery
at Sandwich, and with little ceremony visited Detroit--the old military
post of Pontchartrain--on the opposite side of the river, later
notorious as an emporium for "rum, tomahawks and gunpowder." From
Amherstburg, a small village with an uncompleted fort and shipyard, he
sent messengers to the remote post of St. Joseph, an island, fifty-five
miles from Mackinaw, below Sault Ste. Marie, and started homewards
overland.

In returning, he skirted the great tributary marshes, alive with
water-fowl of every description, whose gabble and flapping wings could
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