Apart, stolid and silent, but interested spectators, lounged the dusky redmen, forever sucking at their _pwoighun-ahsin_ (stone pipes) and making tobacco from the inner bark of red-willow wands, watching and wondering. The foot soldiers carried fire-locks, flints and cartridge boxes. These smooth-bore flint-locks had an effective range of less than 100 yards, and could be discharged only once a minute. Very different to the modern magazine rifle, which can discharge twenty-five shots in a minute and kill at 4,200 yards, while within 2,000 yards it is accurate and deadly. The mounted men were armed with sabres and ponderous pistols.
Our hero addressed the militia. The enemy, he told them, intended to lay waste the country. "Let them be taught," he said, "that Canadians would never bow their necks to a foreign yoke." As the custodian of their rights, he was trying to preserve all they held dear. He looked to them to repel the invaders.
Brock was placed in a most peculiar position, for while the passive Prevost was still instructing him--nearly three weeks _after_ the declaration of war--"to take no offensive measures, as none would be taken by the United States Government," General Hull, with a force of 2,500 tried soldiers, was on his way from Ohio through the Michigan forests to occupy Detroit and invade Canada. Hull reached Detroit, and four days later, with his entire command, crossed the river and occupied Sandwich. But the trip was attended with serious mishap to his army, for Lieutenant Roulette, of the British sloop _Hunter_--a brother of the famous fur-trader--in a small batteau, with only six men, captured the United States packet _Cayuga_, with a detachment of five officers and thirty-three soldiers, as she was coming up the river. The _Cayuga's_ treasure consisted not only of valuable stores and baggage, but Hull's official correspondence with the United States Secretary of War. The contents of this decided Brock, though he had no idea Hull's army was so strong, to attempt the reduction of Fort Detroit without a moment's delay.
The very hour he knew that war was declared he had notified the officer at St. Joseph. Our hero, whose root idea of a soldier's craft was "secrecy in conception and vigour in execution," had no taste for Prevost's mad doctrine that the aggressed had to await the convenience of the aggressor. Brock had been taught to regard tolerance in war as an "evil of the first magnitude," and so had already instructed the commander at St. Joseph that if war was proclaimed he was to attack Mackinaw at once, but if attacked, "defend your post to the last." Prevost at the same time had ordered this officer "in case of necessity to effect his own retreat," never dreaming he would dare attack Mackinaw. What a contrast the despatches of these two men present! The one full of confidence, fight and resistance, the other shrinking from action and suggesting retreat. Brock's despatch was of later date and more palatable to the fighter at St. Joseph. He started at once for Mackinaw, fifty-five miles distant, with 45 of the 10th Royal veterans, 180 Canadians, many of whom were traders and voyageurs, and convoyed by the brig _Caledonia_, owned by the North-West Fur Company.