Such was Amherstburg and its immediate vicinity, during the early years of the present century, and up to the period at which our story commences. Not, be it understood that even _then_ the scenery itself had lost one particle of its loveliness, or failed in aught to awaken and fix the same tender interest. The same placidity of earth and sky and lake remained, but the poor whip-poor-will, driven from his customary abode by the noisy hum of warlike preparation, was no longer heard, and the minds of the inhabitants, hitherto disposed, by the quiet pursuits of their uneventful lives, to feel pleasure in its song, had eye or ear for naught beyond what tended to the preservation of their threatened homes. It was the commencement of the war of 1812. Let us, however introduce the reader more immediately to the scene. Close in his rear, as he stands on the elevated bank of the magnificent river of Detroit, and about a mile from its point of junction with Lake Erie, was the fort of Amherstburg, its defences consisting chiefly of stockade works, flanked, at its several angles, by strong bastions, and covered by a demi-lune of five guns, so placed as to command every approach by water. Distant about three hundred yards on his right, was a large, oblong, square building, resembling in appearance the red, low-roofed blockhouses peering above the outward defences of the fort. Surrounding this, and extending to the skirt of the thinned forest, the original boundary of which was marked by an infinitude of dingy, half blackened stumps, were to be seen numerous huts or wigwams of the Indians, from the fires before which arose a smoke that contributed, with the slight haze of the atmosphere, to envelope the tops of the tall trees in a veil of blue vapor, rendering them almost invisible. Between these wigwams and the extreme verge of the thickly wooded banks, which sweeping in bold curvature for an extent of many miles, brought into view the eastern extremity of Turkey Island, situated midway between Amherstburg and Detroit, were to be seen, containing the accumulated Indian dead of many years, tumuli, rudely executed, it is true, but picturesquely decorated with such adornments as it is the custom of these simple mannered people to bestow on the last sanctuaries of their departed friends. Some three or four miles, and across the water, (for it is here that the river acquires her fullest majesty of expansion,) is to be seen the American island of Gros Isle, which, at the period of which we write, bore few traces of cultivation--scarcely a habitation being visible throughout its extent--various necks of land, however, shoot out abruptly, and independently of the channel running between it and the American main shore, form small bays or harbors in which boats may always find shelter and concealment.