period varied from three to ten or twelve feet; and
over this, at a distance of about twenty yards from
the Detroit, into which it emptied itself, rose, communicating
with the high road, a bridge, which will more than
once be noticed in the course of our tale. Even
to the present hour it retains the name given to it
during these disastrous times; and there are few modern
Canadians, or even Americans, who traverse the “Bloody
Bridge,” especially at the still hours of advanced
night, without recalling to memory the tragic events
of those days, (handed down as they have been by their
fathers, who were eye-witnesses of the transaction,)
and peopling the surrounding gloom with the shades
of those whose life-blood erst crimsoned the once
pure waters of that now nearly exhausted stream; and
whose mangled and headless corpses were slowly borne
by its tranquil current into the bosom of the parent
river, where all traces of them finally disappeared.
These are the minuter features of the scene we have
brought more immediately under the province of our
pen. What Detroit was in 1763 it nearly is at
the present day, with this difference, however, that
many of those points which were then in a great degree
isolated and rude are now redolent with the beneficent
effects of improved cultivation; and in the immediate
vicinity of that memorable bridge, where formerly
stood merely the occasional encampment of the Indian
warrior, are now to be seen flourishing farms and
crops, and other marks of agricultural industry.
Of the fort of Detroit itself we will give the following
brief history:—It was, as we have already
stated, erected by the French while in the occupancy
of the country by which it is more immediately environed;
subsequently, and at the final cession of the Canadas,
it was delivered over to England, with whom it remained
until the acknowledgement of the independence of the
colonists by the mother-country, when it hoisted the
colours of the republic; the British garrison marching
out, and crossing over into Canada, followed by such
of the loyalists as still retained their attachment
to the English crown. At the commencement of
the late war with America it was the first and more
immediate theatre of conflict, and was remarkable,
as well as Michilimackinac, for being one of the first
posts of the Americans that fell into our hands.
The gallant daring, and promptness of decision, for
which the lamented general, Sir Isaac Brock, was so
eminently distinguished, achieved the conquest almost
as soon as the American declaration of war had been
made known in Canada; and on this occasion we ourselves
had the good fortune to be selected as part of the
guard of honour, whose duty it was to lower the flag
of America, and substitute that of England in its
place. On the approach, however, of an overwhelming
army of the enemy in the autumn of the ensuing year
it was abandoned by our troops, after having been
dismantled and reduced, in its more combustible parts,
to ashes. The Americans, who have erected new
fortifications on the site of the old, still retain
possession of a post to which they attach considerable
importance, from the circumstance of its being a key
to the more western portions of the Union.
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