CHAPTER I.

At the northern extremity of the small town which bears
its name, situated at the head of Lake Erie, stands, or
rather stood--for the fortifications then existing were
subsequently destroyed--the small fortress of Amherstburg.

It was the summer of 1812. Intelligence had been some
days received at that post, of the declaration of war by
the United States, the great aim and object of which was
the conquest, and incorporation with her own extensive
territories, of provinces on which she had long cast an
eye of political jealousy, and now assailed at a moment
when England (fighting the battles of the, even to this
moment, recreant and unredeemed Peninsula,) could ill
spare a solitary regiment to the rescue of her threatened,
and but indifferently defended transatlantic possessions.

Few places in America, or in the world, could, at the
period embraced by our narrative, have offered more
delightful associations than that which we have selected
for an opening scene. Amherstburg was at that time one
of the loveliest spots that ever issued from the will of
a beneficent and gorgeous nature, and were the
world-disgusted wanderer to have selected a home in which
to lose all memory of artificial and conventional forms,
his choice would assuredly have fallen here. And