“That cocked hat,” he said, “has not been received; a most distressing circumstance, as from the enormity of my head I find the utmost difficulty in getting a substitute.”

His departure for York weighed upon him.  In Quebec he had the most “delightful garden imaginable, with abundance of melons and other good things”—­these, together with his new bastions and forts, he had to desert.  Being somewhat of a philosopher, he said that since fate decreed the best portion of his life was to be wasted in inaction, and as President Jefferson, though he wanted war, was afraid to declare it, he supposed he should have to be pleased with the prospect of moving upwards.

Brock had been but a few weeks at Fort George—­a “most lonesome place,” as compared with Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, or even Little York, from which latter place he was cut off by forty miles of lake, or more than a hundred miles of dense forest and bridgeless streams—­when he decided upon a flying trip to Detroit, where, during the French regime, the adventurous Cadillac had landed in 1701.  He would inspect the western limit of the frontier now under his care and obtain at first hand a knowledge of the peninsula.  “For,” as he remarked to Glegg, his aide, “if I can read the signs aright, the two nations are rushing headlong into a military conflict.”

Two routes were open to him, one overland, the other land and water.  He chose the latter.  A vast quantity of freight now reached Queenston from Kingston.  Vessels of over fifty tons sailed up the river, bearing merchandise for the North-West Company.  Salt pork from Ireland and flour from London, Britain being the real base of supply—­the remote North-West looking to Niagara for food and clothing—­the return cargoes being furs and grain.  To portage these goods around Niagara Falls kept fifty or more farmers’ waggons busy every day during the summer.  A team of horses or oxen could haul twenty “pieces,” of one hundred weight each, for a load.  The entire length of the portage from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie was practically a street, full of all the bustle and activity that a scattered country population of 12,000 conferred upon it.  Two churches, twenty stores, a printing house, six taverns and a scholastic academy supplied the varied wants of Niagara’s 500 citizens who overfilled its one hundred dwellings.

From Lake Ontario, Newark, as it had been called, presented an inviting appearance.  The brick-and-stone court-house and jail and brightly painted Indian council-house and cottages rose in strong contrast against the green forest.  On the river bank was Navy Hall, a log retreat for seamen, and on Mississaga (Black Snake) Point a stone lighthouse flashed its red signal of hope to belated mariners.  Nearer the lake shore, in isolated dignity across a mile of common, stood Fort George, a dilapidated structure with wooden palisades and bastions.  Half-acre lots in the village were given gratis by the Government to anyone who would