But the Howes, Clintons, and Burgoynes, were at least always ready to fight.

As soon as the Americans could believe that the English were really abandoning their enterprize at the moment that it was all but completed, they rushed back to stop the conflagration: they were too late to save the stores which had been brought from York, the navy barracks, or the brig, but the frigate on the stocks, being built of green wood, would not easily burn, and was found but little injured.

If the destruction at Sackett's Harbour had been completed, we should have deprived the Americans of every prospect of obtaining the ascendancy on the lake."[123] And, as if to crown this miserable failure, the details were narrated by the adjutant-general, in a dispatch to Sir George Prevost, as if Colonel Baynes had commanded in chief, and the governor-general had been present as a mere spectator![124] From these humiliating occurrences on Lake Ontario, we turn to the captured post of Detroit, which, it will be remembered, was left by Major-General Brock in charge of Colonel Proctor.

No sooner had intelligence of the surrender of Hull reached Washington, than the renewal of the North-Western army for the recovery of the Michigan territory became the anxious object of the American government.

That army, which eventually outnumbered the former one, was placed under the command of Major-General Harrison, (who died a few years since while president of the United States,) and in September was in full march for the Miami rapids, the spot assigned as the general rendezvous.