[cktiksHaANK] GENERAL HULL’S INVASION OF CANADA IN 1812 2200 
The Village of Amherstburg, or Malden as it was frequently called 
after the township in which it lay, containing about a hundred and 
fifty dwellings, was pleasantly seated on the bank of the Detroit River 
within view of Lake Erie. Here, McKee, Elliott, Caldwell, and other 
Loyalists had been assigned lands at the close of the American Revolu- 
tion, and when the British garrison and dockyard were removed thither 
upon the evacuation of Detroit, a village had soon sprung up inhabited 
by Loyalists, French Canadians, and Scottish immigrants, most of whom 
entertained a bitter antipathy towards the United States. The mouth 
of the river afforded a safe and commodious anchorage for small vessels. 
The area of cultivation extended along the shore of Lake Erie as far 
as Point Pelee, a distance of thirty miles. Many of these settlers had 
emigrated from the United States within ten years and were not likely 
lo resist an invasion with any degree of vigour unless stoutly supported 
with regular troops. Between Amherstburg and Sandwich lay the 
thriving and populous French Canadian settlement known as the Petit 
Cote, stretching along the river for fifteen miles, in which the houses 
were so close together In many places as to give the appearance of a 
village street. Most of its inhabitants had lived on the opposite bank 
until the evacuation of Detroit, when they decided to abandon ‘a place 
where their lives and property would be at the mercy of “ godless men” 
and follow the British flag across the river.t All their houses were 
built upon the road winding along the Detroit, and their farms were 
accordingly narrow strips of land a mile and a half in length. They 
were a cheerful, kindly, hospitable folk, retaining much of the “ amenity 
of manners” of their ancestors. This delightful spot was called “the 
Eden of Upper Canada” by a contemporary English traveller who had 
seen it in the glory of a May morning. Every farmhouse was em- 
_bosomed in an orchard, making the roadside an avenue of blossoming 
trees which exhaled the most delicate perfumes, while the woods were 
sweet with the scent of wild flowers and aromatic shrubs.* The Village 
of Sandwich, nearly opposite Detroit, consisted of thirty or forty log 
or frame houses, clustered about the ancient mission church of the 
Hurons, but these Indians had removed some twelve years before to their 
reserve on the River Canard. At this place there was a small ship- 
yard where several small vesseis had heen recently built, and two 
miles farther up the river stood the spacious warehouse of the North 


1McMaster—History of the American People; Brown—Northwestern 
Campaign; W. H. Smitn—Canada. 
? Howison, Travels in Upper Canada, p. 199; Darnell, Journal, pp. 73-8. 
