state of cultivation.  The inhabitants on the Canadian side were chiefly of French origin, who began to occupy the country when Canada was still under the dominion of France.  They still retained that urbanity of manners which distinguishes them from the peasantry of most countries.  Further back, the country was settled principally by Americans, partial to the United States.  Three or four years after the war, the houses were so numerous and so close together upon the banks of the Detroit, that there was an appearance of a succession of villages for more than ten miles.  The farms were very narrow in front, extending a long way back, and were allotted in this awkward and inconvenient form, that their respective occupants might be able to render each other assistance when attacked by the Indians, who were at one time very numerous and troublesome in this vicinity.

The banks of the river Detroit are the Eden of Upper Canada, in so far as regards the production of fruit.  Apples, pears, plums, peaches, grapes, and nectarines, attain the highest degree of perfection, and exceed in size, beauty, and flavour, those raised in any other part of the province.  Cider abounds at the table of the meanest peasant, and there is scarcely a farm that has not a fruitful orchard attached to it.  This fineness of the fruit is one consequence of the amelioration of climate, which takes place in the vicinity of the Detroit river and Lake St. Clair.  The seasons there are much milder and more serene than they are a few hundred miles below, and the weather is likewise drier and less variable.  Comparatively little snow falls during the winter, although the cold is often sufficiently intense to freeze over the Detroit river so strongly, that persons, horses, and even loaded sleighs, cross it with ease and safety.  In summer, the country presents a forest of blossoms, which exhale the most delicious odours; a cloud seldom obscures the sky; while the lakes and rivers, which extend in every direction, communicate a reviving freshness to the air, and moderate the warmth of a dazzling sun; and the clearness and elasticity of the atmosphere render it equally healthy and exhilarating.[76]

The fort of Detroit was originally constructed to overawe the neighbouring Indian nations, and its military importance as the key of the upper lakes appears to have been well known to them.  But, neither possessing battering cannon nor understanding the art of attacking fortified places, they could only reduce them by stratagem or famine, and Detroit could always be supplied with provisions by water.  In the year 1763, the Indian chief, Pontiac, whose name has already appeared, (page 164), formed a powerful confederacy of the different tribes, for the purpose of revenging their past wrongs and of preventing their total extirpation, which they were erroneously led to believe was contemplated.  In a sudden, general, and simultaneous irruption on the British frontier, they obtained possession, chiefly