lakes of Canada
have been covered with vessels of war, many of them, as we have already
remarked, of vast magnitude, and been the theatres of conflicts that
would not have disgraced the salt waters of ocean itself, at the period
to which our story refers the flag of England was seen to wave only on
the solitary mast of some ill-armed and ill-manned gunboat, employed
rather for the purpose of conveying despatches from fort to fort, than
with any serious view to acts either of aggression or defence.

In proportion as the colonies of America, now the United States, pushed
their course of civilisation westward, in the same degree did the
numerous tribes of Indians, who had hitherto dwelt more seaward, retire
upon those of their own countrymen, who, buried in vast and
impenetrable forests, had seldom yet seen the face of the European
stranger; so that, in the end, all the more central parts of those
stupendous wilds became doubly peopled. Hitherto, however, that
civilisation had not been carried beyond the state of New York; and all
those countries which have, since the American revolution, been added
to the Union under the names of Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan,
&c., were, at the period embraced by our story, inhospitable and
unproductive woods, subject only to the dominion of the native, and as
yet unshorn by the axe of the cultivator. A few portions only of the
opposite shores of Michigan were occupied by emigrants from the
Canadas, who, finding no one to oppose or molest them, selected the
most fertile spots along the banks of the river; and of the existence
of these infant settlements, the English colonists, who had never
ventured so far, were not even aware until after the conquest of Canada
by the mother-country. This particular district was the centre around
which the numerous warriors, who had been driven westward by the
colonists, had finally assembled; and rude villages and encampments
rose far and near for a circuit of many miles around this infant
settlement and fort of the Canadians, to both of which they had given
the name of Detroit, after the river on whose elevated banks they
stood. Proceeding westward from this point, and along the tract of
country that diverged from the banks of the Lakes Huron, Sinclair, and
Michigan, all traces of that partial civilisation were again lost in
impervious wilds, tenanted only by the fiercest of the Indian tribes,
whose homes were principally along the banks of that gr