Frenchman’s creek is a deep sluggish stream, sixty to eighty feet wide, with marshy banks. Its dull water, seemingly motionless mingles with the clear swift current of the great Niagara, which is here about a mile wide to Strawberry Island opposite. At the mouth of the creek, close on the river shore, is a bridge of timber. Newbigging’s house and farmyard are a hundred yards south of the creek. An apple orchard, willow and poplar trees skirt it on the north side. A field of grass lies beyond the orchard and north of that, other fields which gave a clear rifle range of from five to eight hundred yards, down the river side, and inland over clear stretches of from eight hundred yards to a mile. At these distances from the river were forest thickets, only a few trees intervening on the open pastures. Here O’Neil, apprehensive that Colonel Peacocke, or other British commander would bring up a force by Niagara river side, constructed screens of fence rails across the pasture field, and in the orchard, from east to west to command the approach from north. The creek bended on his left flank and round upon his rear to Niagara river which flanked his right. The position was comparatively strong except as against artillery. Beyond the creek westward, twelve hundred yards to forest thickets, and southerly from Newbigging’s house, pickets were thrown out, and sentries posted: these last all round and back in the woods. And mounted scouts, furnished from the locality and from Buffalo, penetrated to the interior of the country. The creek so frequently mentioned, with a devious course comes through marshy meadows from south-west. On each side are gently elevated grounds, well cultivated, and long settled called the Ridges. A road runs diagonally through the farm lots and squared township roads from a point two miles below, and north of Frenchman’s creek, following the bends of a ridge to the south-west ending on Lake Erie, nine or ten miles west of Waterloo village. This road follows the Limestone Ridge, and is therefore termed Ridge Way.