clay banks slippery, and streams swift, and of these latter the whole
Niagara district was full. Many have now been diverted and some dried
up. I am happy to be able to give my readers the heroine's own simple
account of her journey, as furnished me by the courtesy of Mr. Benson J.
Lossing, author of the "Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812," to
whom the aged lady in 1862 recounted it in a letter (given in a note in
Mr. Lossing's book), the historian, on his visit to Chippewa in 1860,
having failed to see her. She was then eighty-five years of age.


"DEAR SIR,--I will tell you the story in a few words.

"After going to St. David's and the recovery of Mr. Secord, we returned
again to Queenston, where my courage again was much tried. It was there
I gained the secret plan laid to capture Captain Fitzgibbon and his
party. I was determined, if possible, to save them. I had much
difficulty in getting through the American guards. They were ten miles
out in the country. [Footnote: The American sentries were out ten miles
into the country; that is, at any point commanding a possible line of
communication within a radius of ten miles from Fort George, Mrs. Secord
might come upon an American sentry. The deep woods, therefore, were her
only security. These she must thread to the best of her ability, with
what knowledge she might possess of the woodman's craft, for even a
blazed path was not safe. And by this means she must get out of American
cover and into British lines. To do this she must take a most circuitous
route, as she tells us, all round "by Twelve-mile Creek," whose port is
St. Catharines, climbing the ridge that is now cut through by the
Welland Canal, and thus doubling upon what would have been the straight
route, and coming on Fitzgibbon from the back, from the way of his
supports, for Major de Haren lay at Twelve-mile Creek, but not within