smaller
scale, on May 30, at Sandy Creek, between Oswego and
Sackett's Harbour, when a party of marines and bluejackets,
sent to cut out some vessels with naval stores for
Chauncey, was completely lost, every man being either
killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

From Lake Ontario down to the sea the Canadian frontier
was never seriously threatened; and the only action of
any consequence was fought to the south of Montreal in
the early spring. On March 30 the Americans made a last
inglorious attempt in this direction. Wilkinson started
with four thousand men to follow the line of Lake Champlain
and the Richelieu river, the same that was tried by
Dearborn in 1812 and by Hampton in 1813. At La Colle,
only four miles across the frontier, he attacked Major
Handcock's post of two hundred men. The result was like
a second Chateauguay. Handcock drew in three hundred
reinforcements and two gunboats from Isle-aux-Noix.
Wilkinson's advanced guard lost its way overnight. In
the morning he lacked the resolution to press on, even
with his overwhelming numbers; and so, after a part of
his army had executed some disjointed manoeuvres, he
withdrew the whole and gave up in despair.

From this point of the Canadian frontier to the very end
of the five-thousand-mile loop, that is, from Montreal
to Mexico, the theatre of operations was directly based
upon the sea, where the British Navy was by this time
undisputedly supreme. A very few small American men-of-war
were still at large, together with a much greater number
of privateers. But they had no power whatever even to
mitigate the irresistible blockade of the whole coast-line
of the United States. American sea-borne commerce simply
died away; for no mercantile marine could have any
independent life when its trade had to be carried on by
a constantly decreasing tonnage; when, too, it could go
to sea at all only by furtive evasion, and when it had
to take cargo at risks so great that they could not be
covered either by insurance or by any attainable profits.
The Atlantic being barred by this Great Blockade, and
the Pacific being inaccessible, the only practical way
left open to American trade was through the British lines
by land or sea. Some American seamen shipped in British
vessels. Some American ships sailed under British colours.
But the chief external American trade was done illicitly,
by 'underground,' with the British West Indies and with
Canada itself. This was, of course