The fatal result demonstrated the correctness of their reasoning. They made a double ambuscade: one for the train and escort, the other for the relieving force; and they destroyed them both, only three of the first escaping and eight of the latter. This event occurred on the 14th of September, 1773. John Stedman commanded the supply train. At the first fire of the Indians, seeing the fatal snare, he wheeled his horse at once, and, spurring him through a gauntlet of bullets, reached Schlosser in safety. A wounded soldier concealed himself in the bushes, and the drummer-boy lodged in a tree as he fell down the bank. Eight of the relieving force escaped to Fort Niagara to tell the story of their defeat.
Three miles above Schlosser is Cayuga Creek, near the mouth of which La Salle built the _Griffin_, a vessel of sixty tons burden, the first civilized craft that floated on the upper lakes, and the pioneer of an inland commerce of unrivaled growth and value. She reached Green Bay safely, but on her return voyage foundered with all on board in Lake Huron.
The French also built some small vessels on Navy Island. The reënforcements sent from Venango for the French, during the siege of Fort Niagara by Sir William Johnson, in 1759, were landed on this island. To the east of it there is a large deep basin, formed at the foot of the channel, between Grand and Buckhorn islands. The upper part of this channel being narrow, the basin appears like a bay. In this bay the French burnt and sunk the two vessels, as is supposed, which brought down the Venango reënforcements; hence the name "Burnt Ship Bay." The writer has seen the ribs and timbers of these vessels beneath the water, and caught many fine perch which had their haunts near them. The Niagara frontier was the theater of great activity during the War of 1812.
America the old world--Geologically recent origin of the Falls--Evidence thereof--Captain Williams's surveys for a ship canal--Former extent of Lake Michigan--Its outlet into the Illinois River--The Niagara barrier--How broken through--The birth of Niagara.
If Professor Agassiz and Elie De Beaumont are correct in their geological reading, America is the old world rather than the new, and the northern portion of it, stretching from Lake Huron eastward to Labrador and northward toward the Arctic, was the first to be lifted into the genial light of the sun. And Professor Lyell has recourse to the vast stellar spaces for a standard by which to estimate "the interval of time which divides the human epoch from the origin of the coralline limestone over which the Niagara is precipitated at the Falls." "The Alps, the Pyrenees, the Himalayas," he continues, "have not only begun to exist as lofty mountain chains, but the solid materials of which they are composed have been slowly elaborated beneath the sea within the stupendous interval of ages here alluded to."