into the same error, returned it with equal spirit. The fact was, they had been compelled to retire before a superior force, and the movement made by them had given rise to the error. Closely pressed in front by an almost invisible foe, and on the point of being taken in the rear as was falsely imagined, the troops were at length compelled to yield to circumstance and number. [Sidenote: The retreat] "Although our retreat in consequence of this unfortunate misapprehension, commenced in some disorder, this was soon restored, when Major Muir, who had been wounded early in the engagement, succeeded in rallying his men and forming them on {241} the brow of a hill which commanded a short and narrow bridge intersecting the high road and crossing a morass, over which the enemy's guns must necessarily pass. This was about a quarter of a mile in the rear of the position we had previously occupied. Here we remained at least fifteen minutes, when, finding that the Americans did not make their appearance as expected, Major Muir, whose communication with Tecumseh had been cut off, and who heard some smart firing in the woods beyond his left, naturally inferred that the enemy were pushing the Indians in that quarter with a view of turning his flank, gaining the high road in our rear, and thus cutting off our retreat. The order was then given to retire, which we certainly did at the double quick, without being followed by the enemy, who suffered us to gain our boats without further molestation.... "In this skirmish we had first an opportunity of perceiving the extreme disadvantage of opposing regular troops to the enemy in the woods. Accustomed to the use of the rifle from his infancy, dwelling in a measure amid forests with the intricacies of which he is wholly acquainted, and possessing the advantage of a dress which renders him almost undistinguishable to the eye of a European, the American marksman enters with comparative security into a contest with the English soldier, whose glaring habiliment and accoutrements are objects too conspicuous to be missed, while his {242} utter ignorance of a mode of warfare in which courage and discipline are of no avail, renders the struggle for mastery even more unequal. The principal armies to which the Right Division was opposed during the war consisted not of regular and well disciplined troops, but levies of men taken from the forests of Ohio and Kentucky, scarcely inferior as riflemen to the Indians. Dressed in woollen frocks of a gray colour, and trained to cover their bodies behind the trees from which they fired, without exposing more of their persons than was absolutely necessary for their aim, they afforded us on more than one occasion the most convincing proofs that without the assistance of the Indian warriors the defence of so great a portion of western Canada as was entrusted to the charge of the numerically feeble Right Division would have proved a duty of great difficulty and doubt."