equipment so scarce that no attempt had been made to have
whole battalions of 'Select Embodied Militia' ready for
the beginning of the war, as in the more thickly peopled
province of Lower Canada. The best that could be done
was to embody the two flank companies--the Light and
Grenadier companies--of the most urgently needed battalions.
But as these companies contained all the picked men who
were readiest for immediate service, and as the Americans
were very slow in mobilizing their own still more unready
army, Brock found that, for the time being, York could
be left and Detroit attacked with nothing more than his
handful of regulars, backed by the flank-company militiamen
and the Provincial Marine.

Leaving York the very day he closed the House there,
Brock sailed over to Burlington Bay, marched across the
neck of the Niagara peninsula, and embarked at Long Point
with every man the boats could carry--three hundred, all
told, forty regulars of the 41st and two hundred and
sixty flank-company militiamen. Then, for the next five
days, he fought his way, inch by inch, along the north
shore of Lake Erie against a persistent westerly storm.
The news by the way was discouraging. Hull's invasion
had unsettled the Indians as far east as the Niagara
peninsula, which the local militia were consequently
afraid to leave defenceless. But once Brock reached the
scene of action, his insight showed him what bold skill
could do to turn the tide of feeling all along the western
frontier.

It was getting on for one o'clock in the morning of August
14 when Lieutenant Rolette challenged Brock's leading
boat from aboard the Provincial Marine schooner _General
Hunter_. As Brock stepped ashore he ordered all commanding
officers to meet him within an hour. He then read Hull's
dispatches, which had been taken by Rolette with the
captured schooner and by Tecumseh at Brownstown. By two
o'clock all the principal officers and Indian chiefs had
assembled, not as a council of war, but simply to tell
Brock everything they knew. Only Tecumseh and Colonel
Nichol, the quartermaster of the little army, thought
that Detroit itself could be attacked with any prospect
of success. Brock listened attentively; made up his mind;
told his officers to get ready for immediate attack;
asked Tecumseh to assemble all the Indians at noon; and
dismissed the meeting at four. Brock and Tecumseh read
each other at a glance; and Tecumseh, turning to the
tribal chie