24 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
The Council adjourned over night for deliberation and informed 
him next day that it was their unanimous opinion that it was expedient 
to prorogue the Legislature immediately and proclaim martial law. 
In a letter to Colonel Baynes, Brock stated that the Legislature 
had declined to do anything that they were asked. 
“Everybody considers the fate of the country as settled and is 
afraid to appear in the least conspicuous to retard it. A petition has 
already been carried to General Hull signed by many inhabitants 
about Westminster inviting him to advance with a promise to join 
him. The ungrateful and infamous conduct of the Indians on the 
Grand River is still more mortifying.””! 
A hasty examination of a number of contemporary newspapers 
furnishes evidence that a considerable number of persons were either 
being deported or were voluntarily leaving the province by stealth. 
For instance a letter from Buffalo, dated July 14, records the arrival 
of four citizens of the United States who had made their escape from 
Long Point in a skiff. The Buffalo Gazette of July 21 reports that three 
others had been arrested but released and sent across the river, and a 
week later the same paper relates that another had been deported in 
the same way. On August 11, the arrival of eleven fugitives is recorded. 
A correspondent of the New York Statesman, writing from Lewiston, 
N.Y., on August 17, sarcastically remarks :— 
“Canadians arrive daily. The Niagara river which in peaceable 
times can only be crossed in safety in boats, flats, &c., can now be passed 
in apparent safety on logs, rails, slabs, and even by many without any 
buoy whatever. Lakes Ontario and Erie, formerly considered extremely 
dangerous to cross with open boats, no longer present any obstacle 
to those who are so fortunate as to get possession of a boat—the perils 
of the sea are absorbed by the fear of being taken by their friends.”’ 
Three young men, who had lately arrived at that place from York, 
having crossed Lake Ontario in a row boat, stated that “a Mr. Wilmot, 
(Watson?) Surveyor General of Upper Canada, who lived near York 
for many years, has collected a respectable number of men, (about 60 
in number), attached to the American cause and proceeded on his 
march through the wilderness to join General Hull. Wilmot, they 
say, is much exasperated against the Government of Canada and his 
followers not unlike their leader. Other reports of this nature there 
are in circulation, the truth of which cannot be ascertained.’”? 
One of Brock’s first measures on arriving at Port Dover on August 
8 was to direct the arrest of Beemer and other persons suspected of 

’ Brock to Baynes, July 29, 1812. 
* New York Statesman, August 25, 1812. 
