Neither friend nor foe went west in 1813.  But in April 1814 Colonel McDouall set out with ninety men, mostly of the Newfoundland regiment, to reinforce Mackinaw.  He started from the little depot which had been established on the Nottawasaga, a river flowing into the Georgian Bay and accessible by the overland trail from York.

After surmounting the many difficulties of the inland route which he had to take in order to avoid the Americans in the Lake Erie region, and after much hard work against the Lake Huron ice, he at last reached Mackinaw on the 18th of May.  Some good fighting Indians joined him there; and towards the end of June he felt strong enough to send Colonel McKay against the American post at Prairie du Chien.  McKay arrived at this post in the middle of July and captured the whole position—­fort, guns, garrison, and a vessel on the Mississippi.

Meanwhile seven hundred Americans under Croghan, the American officer who had repulsed Procter at Fort Stephenson the year before, were making for Mackinaw itself.  They did some private looting at the Sault, burnt the houses at St Joseph’s Island, and landed in full force at Mackinaw on the 4th of August.  McDouall had less than two hundred men, Indians included.  But he at once marched out to the attack and beat the Americans back to their ships, which immediately sailed away.  The British thenceforth commanded the whole three western lakes until the war was over.

The Lake Erie region remained quite as decisively commanded by the Americans.  They actually occupied only the line of the Detroit.  But they had the power to cut any communications which the British might try to establish along the north side of the lake.  They had suffered a minor reverse at Chatham in the previous December.  But in March they more than turned the tables by defeating Basden’s attack in the Longwoods at Delaware, near London; and in October seven hundred of their mounted men raided the line of the Thames and only just stopped short of the Grand River, the western boundary of the Niagara peninsula.

The Niagara frontier, as before, was the scene of desperate strife.  The Americans were determined to wrest it from the British, and they carefully trained their best troops for the effort.  Their prospects seemed bright, as the whole of Upper Canada was suffering from want of men and means, both civil and military.  Drummond, the British commander-in-chief there, felt very anxious not only about the line of the Niagara but even about the neck of the whole peninsula, from Burlington westward to Lake Erie.  He had no more than 4,400 troops, all told; and he was obliged to place them so as to be ready for an attack either from the Niagara or from Lake Erie, or from both together.  Keeping his base at York with a thousand men, he formed his line with its right on Burlington and its left on Fort Niagara.  He had 500 men at Burlington, 1,000 at Fort George, and 700 at Fort Niagara.  The rest were thrown well forward, so as to get into immediate touch with any Americans advancing from the south.  There were 300 men at Queenston, 500 at Chippawa, 150 at Fort Erie, and 250 at Long Point on Lake Erie.