garrisons, and thus prevented their fall. Captain Dalzell, after conducting, in July, a strong reinforcement to Detroit, was induced to think that he could surprise the Indian force encamped about three miles from the fort, and he sat out at night with 270 men, adopting the most judicious precautions for the secrecy and good order of his march. But the Indians, apprized of his design, were prepared to defeat it, and every step from the fort only conducted the English troops further into the jaws of destruction. Their advance was suddenly arrested by a sharp fire on their front, which was presently followed by a similar discharge on their rear, and then succeeded by destructive vollies from every side. In the darkness neither the position nor the numbers of the Indians could be ascertained. Dalzell was slain early, and his whole detachment was on the brink of irretrievable confusion and ruin when Captain Grant, the next in command, perceiving that a retreat, now the only resource, could only be accomplished by a resolute attack, promptly rallied the survivors, who, steadily obeying his orders, charged the Indians with so much spirit and success as to repulse them on all sides to some distance. Having thus extricated themselves from immediate peril, the British hastily regained the shelter of the fort, with the loss of 70 killed and 40 wounded; and the Indians, unable to reduce the fort by a regular siege, and pausing long enough to ascertain that the garrison was completely on its guard against stratagem and surprise, broke up their camp and abandoned the vicinity of Detroit. The Indians, thus grievously disappointed in their designs on Detroit and Pittsburg, now closely beleaguered Niagara, which they justly considered as not less important. They hoped to reduce it by famine, and on the 14th of September, surrounding a convoy of provisions which had nearly reached its destination, they succeeded in making it their prey by a sudden attack, in which 70 of the British soldiers were slain. Shortly after, as a schooner was crossing Lake Erie with supplies for Detroit, she was attacked by a numerous fleet of canoes, in which were nearly 400 Indians. But this attempt was less successful, and, after a warm engagement, the Indian flotilla was repulsed with considerable loss, as, in a conflict with an armed vessel, they were exposed to the same disadvantages which attended their operations against fortified places. Niagara having at length been powerfully reinforced and well supplied, the Indians abandoned all hope of reducing it, and thenceforth confined themselves to their wonted predatory hostility. In the spring and summer of the following year, the British troops attacked them with such vigour and success, that they were compelled to propose, in Indian phrase, to _bury the hatchet_; and in September a treaty of peace was concluded, the conditions of which were dictated by the English.[78] FOOTNOTES: