provided with three canoes, each having a crew of six men.  It would have been easy for this chief to go to Detroit, and give the alarm to the savages who were then collected there in a large force, and to have made such a disposition of the canoes as would have rendered escape by water impossible; but this would have been robbing himself and his friends of all the credit of taking the scalps, and throwing away what is termed “honor” among others as well as among savages.  He chose, therefore, to trust to his own ability to succeed; and supposing the fugitives would not be particularly on their guard at this point, had little doubt of intercepting them here, should they succeed in eluding those he had left above.

The bee-hunter distrusted that island, and used extra caution in passing it.  In the first place, the two canoes were brought together, so as to give them, in the dark, the appearance of only one; while the four men added so much to the crew as to aid the deception.  In the end it proved that one of Bear’s Meat’s canoes that was paddling about in the middle of the river had actually seen them, but mistook the party for a canoe of their own, which ought to have been near that spot, with precisely six persons in it, just at that time.  These six warriors had landed, and gone up among the cottages of the French to obtain some fruit, of which they were very fond, and of which they got but little in their own villages.  Owing to this lucky coincidence, which the pretty Margery ever regarded as another special interposition of Providence in their favor, the fugitives passed the island without molestation, and actually got below the last lookouts of Bear’s Meat, though without their knowledge.

It was by no means a difficult thing to go down the river, now that so many canoes were in motion on it, at all hours.  The bee-hunter knew what points were to be avoided, and took care not to approach a sentinel.  The river, or strait, is less than a mile wide, and by keeping in the centre of the passage, the canoes, favored by both wind and current, drove by the town, then an inconsiderable village, without detection.  As soon as far enough below, the canoes were again cast loose from each other, and sail was made on each.  The water was smooth, and some time before the return of light the fugitives were abreast of Malden, but in the American channel.  Had it been otherwise, the danger could not have been great.  So completely were the Americans subdued by Hull’s capitulation, and so numerous were the Indian allies of the British, that the passage of a bark canoe, more or less, would hardly have attracted attention.  At that time, Michigan was a province of but little more than a name.  The territory was wide, to be sure, but the entire population was not larger than that of a moderately sized English market town, and Detroit was then regarded as a distant and isolated point.  It is true that Mackinac and Chicago were both more remote, and both more isolated,