finny harvest, on which much of their winter food supply depended.
As this was a mutual necessity, each party, by a tacit consent,
was allowed to ply this peaceful avocation, for the most part,
undisturbed by hostile demonstrations of the other.

For the defence of the whole frontier of thirty-four miles from
Fort Erie to Fort George, Brock had only some fifteen hundred men,
of whom at least one-half were militiamen and Indians. On the
American side of the river, a force of over six thousand regulars
and militia were assembled for the invasion of Canada. These were
distributed along the river from Fort Niagara to Buffalo. Brock
was compelled, therefore, still further to weaken his already
scanty force by being on the alert at all points, as he knew not
at which one the attack would be made. Consequently there were
only some three hundred men, mostly militia, quartered at
Queenston at the time of which we write. They were billeted at the
inn and houses of the village and in the neighbouring farmhouses
and barns.

The morning of the thirteenth of October, a day ever memorable in
the annals of Canada, broke cold and stormy. Low hung clouds
mantled the sky and made the late dawn later still, and cast still
darker shadows on the sombre clumps of spruce and pines that
clothed the sides of the gorge, and on the sullen water that
flowed between. A couple of fishermen of the neighbourhood who
were serving in the militia had been permitted by the officer in
command to attend to their seines, with the injunction to keep a
sharp look-out at the same time, and to be ready at an instant's
summons to join the ranks. As the schools of herring were in full
run, they had remained all night in the little bothie or hut, made