tion. Flour and salt were scarcely to be purchased at any price
and the condition of many families soon became almost too wretched to be
endured. It is not surprising then that numbers of those who had no very
strong ties to retain them, seized the first opportunity of escape.

Lake Erie was frozen over as early as the 12th of January. A few days
later two deserters and three civilians made their way from Point Abino
to Buffalo upon the ice. They stated that the British forces were
greatly reduced by sickness and desertion and that they did not believe
there were more than thirty regulars stationed along the river between
Fort Erie and Niagara. In fact several companies of the 41st had been
recently despatched to strengthen the garrison of Amherstburg which was
again threatened with an attack, and a show of force was kept up by
ostentatiously sending out parties along the river in sleighs by day and
bringing them back to quarters after dark.

Stimulated by the information derived from these men the commandant at
Buffalo projected the surprise of Fort Erie by crossing on the ice, but
the desertion of a non-commissioned officer, Sergeant Major Macfarlane,
disconcerted his plans.

Late in March the arrival of three families of refugees at Buffalo by
the same route is recorded. They confirmed former accounts of want and
distress and the weakness of the British garrisons on the Niagara. The
American officers were enabled, by information obtained from these and
other sources, to estimate with precision the actual force which might
be assembled to resist an invasion. But as they failed to make their
attacks simultaneously it happened in several instances that they
encountered the same troops successively at different places many miles
apart. Soldiers of the 41st, who had been present with Brock at the
taking of Detroit fought at Queenston on the 13th of October and
returned in time to share in the victory at the River Raisin on the 22nd
January, 1813. Two companies of the 8th that took part in the assault
upon Ogdensburg on the 22nd February, faced the invaders at York on the
27th April and again at Fort George a month later. Finding themselves
repeatedly confronted with considerably larger forces than they had been
led to expect, the American generals soon ceased to put much confidence
in the reports of their spies.

The cabinet had at first designated Kingston, York, and Fort George
points of attack in the order named. Th