communication in our front, leaving open the water route only, and these woody positions will be shortly occupied by the Indians of this neighbourhood and a corps of volunteer voyageur Canadians.  The enemy’s preparations, however, may be a feint to cover some plans in agitation against your province.

I send you a long letter from Kempt for your perusal, with a sketch of Badajos, though no longer recent news.  I am sure the interest you take in the success of our arms, and in his share in particular, will induce you to read it with pleasure.

Sir George Prevost to Major-General Brock.

    MONTREAL, September 14, 1812.

Captain Fulton arrived on the 11th instant with your letter of the 7th; the intelligence you have communicated by it convinces me of the necessity of the evacuation of Fort Detroit, unless the operations of the enemy on the Niagara frontier bear a character less indicative of determined hostile measures against your line in their front than they did when you last reported to me.  You will therefore be pleased, subject to the discretion I have given you under the circumstances to which I have alluded, to take immediate steps for evacuating that post, together with the territory of Michigan; by this measure you will be enabled to withdraw a greater number of the troops from Amherstburg, instead of taking them from Colonel Vincent, whose regular force ought not on any account to be diminished.

I have already afforded you reinforcements to the full extent of my ability; you must not, therefore, expect a further supply of men from hence until I shall receive from England a considerable increase to the present regular force in this province:  the posture of affairs, particularly on this frontier, requires every soldier who is in the country.

In my last dispatch from Lord Bathurst, dated the 4th of July, he tells me, “that his majesty’s government trusts I will be enabled to suspend with perfect safety all extraordinary preparations for defence which I may have been induced to make in consequence of the precarious state of the relations between this country and the United States; and that as every specific requisition for warlike stores and accoutrements which had been received from me had been complied with, with the exception of the clothing of the corps proposed to be raised from the Glengary emigrants, he had not thought it necessary to direct the preparation of any further supplies.”  This will afford you a strong proof of the infatuation of his majesty’s ministers upon the subject of American affairs, and shew how entirely I have been left to my own resources in the event which has taken place.

Judging from what you have already effected in Upper Canada, I do not doubt but that, with your present means of defence, you will be able to maintain your position at Fort George, and that the enemy will be again foiled in any further attempts they may make to invade the province.

    I leave to your discretion to decide on the necessity of
    sending a reinforcement to Michilimakinack.