306 THE FIGHT OF BLOODY BRIDGE. [1763, July. 



Coasting the south shore of Lake Erie, they 

 soon reached Presqu' Isle, where they found the 

 scorched and battered blockhouse captured a few- 

 weeks before, and saw with surprise the mines 

 and intrenchments made by the Indians in assailing 

 it.^ Thence, proceeding on their voyage, they 

 reached Sandusky on the twenty-sixth of July ; and 

 here they marched inland to the neighboring vil- 

 lage of the Wyandots, which they burnt to the 

 ground, at the same time destroying the corn, 

 which this tribe, more provident than most of the 

 others, had planted there in the spring. Dalzell 

 then steered northw^ard for the mouth of the De- 

 troit, which he reached on the evening of the 

 twenty-eighth, and cautiously ascended under cover 

 of night. " It was fortunate," writes Gladwyn, 

 " that they were not discovered, in which case 

 they must have been destroyed or taken, as the 

 Indians, being emboldened by their late successes, 

 tight much better than we could have expected." 



On the morning of the twenty-ninth, the whole 

 country around Detroit was covered by a sea of 

 fog, the precursor of a hot and sultry day ; but at 

 sunrise its surface began to heave and toss, and, 

 parting at intervals, disclosed the dark and burn- 

 ished surface of the river ; then lightly rolling, 

 fold upon fold, the mists melted rapidly away, 

 the last remnant clinging sluggishly along the 

 margin of the forests. Now, for the first time, 

 the garrison could discern the approaching con- 

 voy.^ Still they remained in suspense, fearing 



1 Penn. Gaz. No. 1811. 2 Pontiac MS. 



