and sky, and lake remained, but the whip-poor-will, driven
from his customary abode by the noisy hum of warlike
preparation, was no longer heard, and the minds of the
inhabitants, hitherto disposed, by the quiet pursuits of
their uneventful lives, to feel pleasure in its song,
had eye nor ear for aught beyond what tended to the
preservation of their threatened homes.

Let us, however, introduce the reader more immediately
to the scene. Close in his rear, as he stands on the
elevated bank of the magnificent river of Detroit, and
about a mile from its point of junction with Lake Erie,
is the fort of Amherstburg, its defences consisting
chiefly of stockade works, flanked, at its several angles,
by strong bastions, and covered by a demi lune of five
guns, so placed as to command every approach by water.
Distant about three hundred yards on his right is a large,
oblong square building, resembling in appearance the red
low roofed blockhouses peering above the outward defences
of the fort. Surrounding this, and extending to the skirt
of the thinned forest, the original boundary of which is
marked by an infinitude of dingy half blackened stumps,
are to be seen numerous huts or wigwams of the Indians,
from the fires before which arises a smoke that contributes,
with the slight haze of the atmosphere, to envelope the
tops of the tall trees in a veil of blue vapour, rendering
them almost invisible. Between these wigwams and the
extreme verge of the thickly wooded banks, which sweeping
in bold curvature for an extent of many miles, brings
into view the eastern extremity of Turkey Island, situated