[siebert] loyalists AND SIX NATION INDIANS 99 



tion. The militia of Nassau, which was enrolled at this time, numbered 

 600 persons.^ 



The condition of the military works at Fort Erie and Niagara 

 at this period is revealed in a report of Captain Gottier Mann, com- 

 manding engineer, who had been dispatched in the course of the sum- 

 mer to inspect the posts in Upper Canada and harbors suitable for 

 naval stations. Captain Mann reported that the wharf at Navy- 

 Hall was in ruins and the building in a dilapidated state, that one 

 pile of the Rangers' Barracks was past re-establishing, while the other 

 was capable of being repaired at a cost of about 35 pounds. He 

 thought that the situation of Navy Hall was convenient for purposes 

 of transportation, although Niagara had a better command of the en- 

 trance to the river. Fort Erie, he stated, was in a wretched condition 

 and so much in ruin that it was not easy to say which was the worst 

 part of it. Most of the picketing was gone and the rest rotten, the store- 

 house almost past repair, the wharf in need of attention, and the 

 stone wall next to the water washed away by the encroachment of 

 Lake Erie.^ 



Concerning the transportation of merchandise, stores, etc., 

 from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, Mann wrote that while there was a 

 tolerably good road from Niagara to the landing place below the Falls, 

 a distance of somewhat more than seven miles, all goods were carried 

 up the river in batteaux or in vessels to the landing place, whence 

 they were drawn up the bank, about fifty feet in height, upon ways at 

 an easy slope by means of a capstan at the top. From this point 

 they were conveyed by wagon to Fort Schlosser, seven miles away, 

 this post being one and a half miles above the Falls (on the American 

 side). At Fort Schlosser the goods were again loaded into boats and 

 carried eighteen miles to Fort Erie (on the Canadian side), to be 

 re-shipped by vessel the length of Lake Erie to Detroit or other points. 

 Captain Mann suggested that a wharf be built on the west side of the 

 Niagara a little below the old landing place, where the bank was lower 

 than elsewhere and storehouses might be erected "close to the road 

 leading through the settlements." He thought that Chippawa Creek 

 was superior in some respects as a point of trans-shipment above the 

 Falls to Fort Schlosser, although the change from one to the other 

 would necessitate bridging the creek and building a new road. How- 

 ever, both the road and the bridge were conveniences that the new 

 settlers would require sooner or later for their own use. Mann called 

 attention to the fact that the adoption of his plan would improve 

 the transport and keep it all on the western side of the Niagara, 



1 Niagara Hist. Soc, No. 17, 23-24. ^ ;f— *w. 



= Ibid., 26. yC^^^^^T 



'- ( I 



