The territory served by the regular post office did not extend beyond Niagara. But at Amherstburg, the western end of lake Erie, and over two hundred miles beyond Niagara, there were a military post and the beginnings of a settlement, which it was desirable to provide with the means of communication. During his visit to Niagara in 1801, Heriot devised a plan[158] for this purpose, which appears to have contained all the advantages of a regular postal service, with the charges so much less than the ordinary postage rates as to give the people of the district cause to regret the advent of the regular postmaster and mail courier. Heriot proposed that the postmaster of Amherstburg should receive letters for despatch, and, from time to time as one of the vessels on the lake happened to be going to fort Erie, at the eastern end of the lake, make up a bag, seal it with the official seal, and deliver it to the captain of the vessel. At fort Erie the bag was to be placed on one of the flat-bottomed _bateaux_, which traded between that village and Chippewa and the Niagara river. Between Chippewa, Queenstown and Niagara, on the Niagara portage, there were stage coaches running, and the bag was taken to Niagara by this means. If the letters were intended for places beyond Niagara, they were put into the regular post office at that point. This arrangement was quite as safe and expeditious as the postal service between Niagara and Kingston, and yet the charges were very much less than if the letters had been carried the same distance within the authorized system. The ordinary postage on a letter from Amherstburg to fort Erie by land would be tenpence. Heriot did not consider that he could properly charge more than twopence a letter. From fort Erie to Niagara the postage would have been fourpence, which was the rate Heriot proposed to charge. The question will arise, in what regard this scheme differed from the ordinary postal arrangements, the charges for which were fixed by statute. The point of difference lay simply in this, that Heriot did not propose to administer the oath of office to the courier, who effected the transportation of the mails from Amherstburg to Niagara. There would be none but trustworthy men employed to look after the mails, and the couriers were under effective supervision in the fact that the postmaster in making up the mail enclosed with it a certificate as to the number of letters in it, which the receiving postmaster verified before the courier was paid for his services. Heriot's scheme, then, was identical with the ordinary arrangements in all respects but one, and that one was purely formal. Heriot's scruples would lead one to suspect a desire to show how excessive the ordinary charges were.