and its incomplete fortifications occupied his time.  In the summer of 1803 he was stationed at York, a hamlet carved out of the backwoods, sustaining a handful of people, but famous as the gathering-place of many wise men.  He found that desertions in Upper Canada had become too frequent.  The temptations offered by a long line of frontier easy of access, and the desperate discipline in the army, had led to much brutality in the way of punishments.

Such were the conditions in Upper Canada when Brock reached York.  Shortly after his arrival six men, influenced by an artificer, stole a military batteau and started across the lake to Niagara.  By midnight Brock, with his trusty sergeant-major and the ever-watchful Dobson, in another batteau with twelve men, passed out of the western gap in hot pursuit of the defaulters.  Though the night was calm the trip was perilous.  Before them stretched a waste of water, but our hero was in his element.  He was living over again his daring visits to the Casquets through the furious seas that raced between St. Sampson and the Isle of Herm.

The crew was divided into “watches,” six taking an hour’s “breather” while the other six rowed, hour and hour about, alternately rowing and resting.  When the wind served they hoisted their big square sail, our hero at the tiller.  On this occasion there was little wind, and “Master Isaac,” for example’s sake, and “to keep my biceps and fore-arm in good condition”—­as he told the sergeant-major—­took his regular spells at the oar.  On arriving at Fort George, Colonel Hunter, Governor and Commandant, rebuked him for rashly venturing across the lake in an open boat, “a risk,” he said, “never before undertaken."[1] The expedition, however, was successful, for the deserters were surprised on the American shore and made prisoners.

FOOTNOTE: 

[1] Lake Ontario was crossed from Toronto to the wharf at the mouth of the Niagara River in an ordinary double-scull, lap-strake pleasure-skiff, by the writer and another Argonaut—­Herbert Bartlett—­one unruly morning in the summer of 1872.  Though a risky row, and not previously attempted, it was not regarded as a remarkable feat by the performers.

[Illustration:  VIEW OF QUEENSTON ROAD, ABOUT 1824]

CHAPTER VI.

BRIDLE-ROAD, BATTEAU AND CANOE.

The means for transit through Canada at this time was most primitive, and not the least of the questions which occupied Brock’s thoughts was the important one of transportation.  The lack of facilities for moving large bodies of men and supplies, in event of war, was as apparent as was the lack of vessels of force on lake and river.

Between Quebec and Montreal, a distance of sixty leagues, the overland journey was divided into twenty-four stages, requiring four relays of horse-caleches in summer and horse-carioles in winter.  The time occupied was three days, and the rate for travellers twenty-five cents a league.  This rough road—­which entailed numerous ferries in summer at the Ottawa and at Lake St. Francis, except for a break of fifty miles—­led by Cornwall and Prescott to Kingston, along which route United Empire Loyalists twenty years before had established themselves.