place was ordered to be stormed.  The assailants reached the ditch which was raked by the masked gun, and sustained in consequence so severe a loss, that they retreated precipitately, having their leader, Brevet Lieut-Colonel Short, of the 41st, with 3 officers and 52 men, killed or missing, besides 3 officers and 38 men wounded; while the Americans had only 1 killed and 7 slightly wounded.  The Indians did not assist in the assault, withdrawing to a ravine out of gun shot.  Thus foiled, Proctor retired on the 3d, and after abandoning “considerable baggage and a gun-boat laden with cannon ball,” he returned to Amherstburg.  The attack is said to have been “ill digested,” and the expedition to have ended with “some disgrace.”

Towards the end of August, (1813,) the American squadron, under Commodore Perry, became too powerful for the British, under Captain Barclay, who now remained at Amherstburg to await the equipment of the Detroit, recently launched.  The British forces in the neighbourhood falling short of various supplies, for which they depended chiefly upon the fleet, Captain Barclay had no other alternative than to risk a general engagement.  With this purpose he sailed on the 9th of September, with his small squadron wretchedly manned, and the next day encountered the enemy.  For some time the fate of the battle poised in favor of the British, as the principal American ship, the Lawrence, struck her colours; but a sudden breeze turned the scale against them, and the whole of their squadron was compelled to surrender, after a desperate engagement of upwards of three hours.  Captain Barclay was dangerously wounded; Captain Finnis, of the Queen Charlotte, killed; and every commander and officer second in command was either killed or wounded.

Major-General Proctor’s army was deprived, by this disastrous defeat, of every prospect of obtaining its necessary supplies through Lake Erie, and a speedy retreat towards the head of Lake Ontario became inevitable.  Stung with grief and indignation, Tecumseh at first refused to agree to the measure, and in a council of war held at Amherstburg on the 18th of September, he thus delivered his sentiments against it: 

    Father, listen to your children!  You have them now all before
    you.

The war before this, our British father gave the hatchet to his red children, when our old chiefs were alive.  They are now dead.  In that war our father was thrown on his back by the Americans, and our father took them by the hand without our knowledge; and we are afraid that our father will do so again at this time.

The summer before last, when I came forward with my red brethren, and was ready to take up the hatchet in favor of our British father, we were told not to be in a hurry,—­that he had not yet determined to fight the Americans.

Listen!  When war was declared, our father stood up and gave us the tomahawk,