were landing on the beach below the covering bluffs.  No support could be given to the opposing British force by the fire of Fort George, as the village of Newark intervened.  So Vincent had to fight it out in the open.  On being threatened with annihilation he retired towards Burlington, withdrawing the garrison of Fort George, and sending orders for all the other troops on the Niagara to follow by the shortest line.  He had lost a third of the whole force defending the Niagara frontier, both sides of which were now possessed by the Americans.  But by nightfall on May 29 he was standing at bay, with his remaining sixteen hundred men, in an excellent strategical position on the Heights, half-way between York and Fort George, in touch with Dundas Street, the main road running east and west, and beside Burlington Bay, where he hoped to meet the British flotilla commanded by Yeo.

Captain Sir James Lucas Yeo was an energetic and capable young naval officer of thirty, whom the Admiralty had sent out with a few seamen to take command on the Lakes under Prevost’s orders.  He had been only seventeen days at Kingston when he sailed out with Prevost, on May 27, to take advantage of Chauncey’s absence at the western end of the lake.  Arrived before Sackett’s Harbour, the attack was planned for the 29th.  The landing force of seven hundred and fifty men was put in charge of Baynes, the adjutant-general, a man only too well fitted to do the ‘dirty work’ of the general staff under a weak commander-in-chief like Prevost.  All went wrong at Sackett’s Harbour.  Prevost was ’present but not in command’; Baynes landed at the wrong place.  Nevertheless, the British regulars scattered the American militiamen, pressed back the American regulars, set fire to the barracks, and halted in front of the fort.  The Americans, thinking the day was lost, set fire to their stores and to Chauncey’s new ships.  Then Baynes and Prevost suddenly decided to retreat.  Baynes explained to Prevost, and Prevost explained in a covering dispatch to the British government, that the fleet could not co-operate, that the fort could not be taken, and that the landing party was not strong enough.  But, if this was true, why did they make an attack at all; and, if it was not true, why did they draw back when success seemed to be assured?

Meanwhile Chauncey, after helping to take Fort George, had started back for Sackett’s Harbour; and Dearborn, left without the fleet, had moved on slowly and disjointedly, in rear of Vincent, with whom he did not regain touch for a week.  On June 5 the Americans camped at Stoney Creek, five miles from the site of Hamilton.  The steep zigzagging bank of the creek, which formed their front, was about twenty feet high.  Their right rested on a mile-wide swamp, which ran down to Lake Ontario.  Their left touched the Heights, which ran from Burlington to Queenston.  They were also in superior numbers, and ought to have been quite secure.  But they thought so much more of