At length the wall was reached, the ladders were planted, and Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond, with a hundred men of the Royal Artillery, gained a footing in a bastion. The parole by which they recognized each other in the dark was "steel"--an omen of the desperate means used to insure their victory. With pike and bayonet they rushed upon the garrison. Their comrades swarmed up the scaling ladders and filled the bastion. Suddenly the ground heaved and trembled as with the throes of an earthquake. There came a burst of thunder sound; a volcano of fire and timber; stones and living men were hurled two hundred feet in the air; and the night settled down on the scene of chaos. The British columns, utterly demoralized by this appalling disaster, fell back precipitately on their entrenchments, leaving the mangled bodies of two hundred of their comrades, among them the gallant leader, Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond, in the fatal fosse and bastion. The Americans, being strongly re-enforced, a month later made a vigorous sally from the fort, but were driven back, with a loss on the part of both assailants and assailed of about four hundred men. Shortly after, General Izzard blew up the works and re- crossed the river to United States territory. The fortress, constructed at such a cost, and assailed and defended with such valour, soon fell to utter ruin. Where earth-shaking war achieved such vast exploits, to-day the peaceful waters of the placid lake kiss the deserted strand, and a few grass-grown and mouldering ram-mounds alone mark the grave of so much military pomp, power, and unavailing valour. [Footnote: Engravings of these are given in Lossing's "Field Book of the War."] Nor were the ravages of the war confined alone to the Niagara frontier. Far otherwise. They extended from the upper waters of the Mississippi to the Atlantic seaboard, and to the Gulf of Mexico. In the West, Michilimackinac was re-enforced, and Prairie du Chien, a fort on the Mississippi, was captured by a body of six hundred and fifty Canadians and Indians, without the loss of a single man. An American attempt to recapture Michilimackinac, by a force of a thousand men, was a total failure, the only exploit of the expedition being the inglorious pillage and destruction of the undefended trading-post of Ste. Marie. Meanwhile, Sir John Sherbrooke, the Governor of Nova Scotia, despatched several hostile expeditions from Halifax against the coast of Maine. Eastport, Castine, Bangor, Machias, and the whole region from the Penobscot to the St. Croix, surrendered to the British, and were held by them to the close of the war.