We return now to retrace the fortunes of the war of which the culminating acts, at least in Upper Canada, had now taken place. After the fatal fight of Lundy's Lane, as we have seen, the American force retreated precipitately on Fort Erie, of which they retained possession, and, working night and day, formed an entrenched camp for their protection, strengthening a line of abattis along the front. The victorious British columns closely followed, and for three weeks the camp and fort occupied by the American army were closely besieged by a force only two-thirds as numerous. Two American armed vessels, which supported the fort on the lake side, were very cleverly captured in a night attack by Captain Dobbs, of the Royal Navy, by means of boats conveyed by sheer force of human muscles twenty miles across the country in the rear of the American lines, from the Niagara to Lake Erie. The British forces also threw up strong entrenchments and planted batteries; and the two armies lay watching each other like couchant lions, waiting the opportunity to make the fatal spring. The guns on the batteries were kept double shotted, and through the long nights dark lanterns were kept burning, and linstocks ready for firing lay beside every gun. Ever and anon a live shell screamed through the air, one of which penetrating an American magazine, caused it to explode with fearful violence. On the 14th of August, after a vigorous bombardment, a night attack, in three columns, was made upon the fort. At two o'clock in the morning, the columns moved out of the trenches, with the utmost silence, bearing scaling ladders, and crept stealthily over the plain toward the apparently slumbering fort. Dark clouds hung low, and the only sounds heard were the melancholy cry of the loon and the measured dash of the waves upon the shore. At length the American picket discovered the approach of the British columns and gave the alarm. The bugles rang shrill in the ear of night. Every embrasure of the seemingly sleeping fort flashed forth its tongue of flame, revealing the position of the assailants, and the gloom settled heavier than ever, deepened still further by the sulphureous clouds of smoke from the cannon. The British van hacked with their swords at the abattis, and tried, by wading through a marsh, to enter the curtain of the fore by a flank movement. Rent and torn by a fire of canister and grape, five times the assailing columns were hurled back, and five times, undaunted, they returned to the charge.