-among whom was Dobson--casting hook and
troll for bass, trout, pickerel and herring, with which the river
swarmed. On one occasion Brock helped to haul up a seine net in which
were counted 1,008 whitefish of an average weight of two pounds, 6,000
being netted in one day.

Side-wheel ferries, driven by horse-power, plied between the river's
mouth and the Queenston landing. The paddle-wheels of these were open
double-spoke affairs, without any circular rim. A stage-coach also ran
between Queenston and Fort Erie, the first in Upper Canada. For one
dollar the passenger could travel twenty-five miles.

At Fort Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, Brock embarked in
mid-August in a government schooner. He wished to familiarize himself
with the upper water-ways. He made the long trip from Quebec to York,
and thence to Niagara, Amherstburg, Detroit, Sandwich and return
overland to Fort George, within two months--record time. Dobson
accompanied his master. Brock was silent as to his impressions, but
admitted he was convinced that the water route for a military expedition
was the only practical one, and that Mackinaw, held by the United
States, was the portal and key to the western frontier in case of
invasion. He crossed overland through the "bad woods" and open plains to
the Point of Pines, where batteaux and canoes awaited him. From thence
he proceeded along the north shore of Lake Erie until abreast of the
Miami, a confluent of the Ohio River, on the south shore, then turned
northward up the Detroit River, twenty-five miles farther, reaching
Amherstburg--called Malden by the Americans--250 miles from Fort Erie.
Here, after consulting with Colonel St. George, he inspected the battery
at Sandwich, and with little ceremony visited Detroit--the old military
post of Pontchartrain--on the opposite side of the river, later
notorious as an emporium for "rum, tomahawks and gunpowder." From
Amherstburg, a small village with an uncompleted fort and shipyard, he
sent messengers to the remote post of St. Joseph, an island, fifty-five
miles from Mackinaw, below Sault Ste. Marie, and started homewards
overland.

In returning, he skirted the great tributary marshes, alive with
water-fowl of every description, whose gabble and flapping wings could
be heard at a long distance. He camped in the vast hardwood forests that
covered the western point of the peninsula that extends west from Lake
Ontario to the river connecting Lake Huron with