Amherst, the commander-in-chief, far away at New York, had not yet learnt of the peril of Detroit or of the nature and extent of the Indian rising, but in the ordinary course in the month of May supplies were being sent up for the western garrisons. The convoy intended for Detroit left Niagara on the 13th of that month, in charge of Lieutenant Cuyler with 96 men. Coasting along the northern shore of Lake Erie, Cuyler, towards the end of the month, reached a point near the outlet of the Detroit river, and there drew up his boats on the shore. Before an encampment could be formed the Indians broke in upon the English, who fled panic-stricken to the boats; only two boats escaped, and between 50 and 60 men out of the total number of 96 were killed or taken. The survivors, Cuyler himself among them, made their way across the lake to Fort Sandusky, only to find that it had been burnt to the ground, thence to Presque Isle, which was shortly to share the fate of Sandusky, and eventually to Niagara. The prisoners were carried off by their Indian captors, up the Detroit river; two escaped to the fort to tell the tale of disaster, but the majority were butchered with all the nameless tortures which North American savages could devise. [Sidenote: Destruction of the Western outposts by the Indians.] [Sidenote: They take Michillimackinac.] While Detroit was being besieged, at other points in the West one disaster followed another. Isolated from each other, weakly garrisoned, commanded, in some instances, by officers of insufficient experience or wanting in determination, the forts fell fast. On the 16th of May Sandusky was blotted out; on the 25th Fort St. Joseph, at the south-eastern end of Lake Michigan, was taken; and on the 27th Fort Miami, on the Maumee river. Fort Ouatanon on the Wabash was taken on the 1st of June; and on the 4th of that month the Ojibwa Indians overpowered the garrison of Michillimackinac, second in importance to Detroit. Captain Etherington, the commander at Michillimackinac, knew nothing of what was passing elsewhere, though he had been warned of coming danger, and he lost the fort through an Indian stratagem. The English were invited outside the palisades to see an Indian game of ball; and, while the onlookers were off their guard, and the gates of the fort stood open, the players turned into warriors; some of the garrison and of the English traders were murdered, and the rest were made prisoners. The massacre, however, was not wholesale. Native jealousy gave protectors to the English survivors in a tribe of Ottawas who dwelt near: a French Jesuit priest used every effort to save their lives; and eventually the survivors, among whom was Etherington, were, with the garrison of a neighbouring and subordinate post at Green Bay, sent down in safety to Montreal by the route of the Ottawa river. [Sidenote: Fort Pitt isolated.]