was the chief British supply depot and Nairne had just been sent thither to aid in repelling a menace from the American fleet.  He had brought his force from Ten Mile Creek, in boats, on the open lake, and the journey, lasting all day, was ticklish enough.  All the time the American fleet was in pursuit and it reached the narrow gateway to Burlington Bay only an hour and a half after Captain Nairne entered.  The enemy intended to storm the heights, and landed 800 men for that purpose; but finding the position too strong, they re-embarked their force at daylight on August 1st, and bore away for York (Toronto) where they wrought new havoc in that undefended and “much to be pitied town.”

On August 20th Nairne writes, still from Burlington Heights.  This, his last letter, gives a dramatic account of a running fight between the rival fleets, in the dark, illuminated, however, by the flashes from their cannon: 

It was a moment of great anxiety with us when the two fleets lay in sight of each other, the one wishing to avoid coming to hard knocks and the other straining every nerve to be at it.  I rode 20 miles to see the hostile squadrons, and, for nearly two days, had the pleasure of observing their movements from the mountain at Forty Mile Creek, and I must confess I never saw a more gratifying or more interesting sight.  At 11 o’clock on the night of the last day that I was there (the 10th inst.) Sir James Yeo contrived to bring them [the Americans] to a partial engagement and for an hour and a half the Lake opposite the Leo appeared to be in a continual blaze.  I remained in a state of uncertainty as to the result till daylight when I observed the Yanky fleet steering for Fort George with two Schooners less than they had the evening before, and our fleet steering towards York with two additional sail. [They were the Julia and the Growler.] The Americans have besides lost two of their largest Schooners, which upset from carrying a press of sail, when our fleet was in chase of them.

While this dramatic fighting is going on before his eyes Nairne’s one regret is that his present quarters are “completely out of the way of broken heads.”

Meanwhile at Murray Bay events were happening.  Colonel Fraser was kept busy.  Some of the French Canadians already showed a restiveness that ended in open rebellion in 1837 and these misguided people now dreamed of using the war with the United States as an opportunity for throwing off the British yoke.  At Murray Bay traitorous meetings were held.  Fraser watched them closely and caused a number of the habitants to be imprisoned for a time on a charge of treason.  For an old man of eighty he showed amazing vigour.  His neighbours of the Nairne household were now in great trouble.  Tom’s elder sister by five years, Mary, the sprightly “Polly” of his letters, had brought grief to her family.  She made a clandestine marriage with a habitant, the