ere lost to Britain for ever. It was hardest to give up Detroit,—it broke up their route and added many a weight to the weary packer's back when the fur trade had to take a more northern outlet along the Ottawa.
It was ten o'clock in the morning of July 11, 1796, when the Detroiters peering through their glasses espied two vessels. "The Yankees are coming!"
A thrill went through the garrison, and even through the flag that fluttered above. The last act in the war of independence was at hand.
The four gates of Detroit opened to be closed no more, as the drawbridge fell over the moat and the Americans marched into the northern stronghold. It was Lernoult's old fort built so strenuously in that icy winter of 1779-80, when "Clark is coming" was the watchword of the north. Scarce a picket in the stockade had been changed since that trying time. Blockhouse, bastion, and battery could so easily have been taken, that even at this day we cannot suppress a regret that Clark had not a chance at Detroit!
Barefooted Frenchmen, dark-eyed French girls, and Indians, Indians everywhere, came in to witness the transfer of Detroit. At noon, July 11, 1796, the English flag was lowered and the Stars and Stripes went up where Clark would fain have hung them seventeen years before.
And the old cellar of the council house! Like a tomb was its revelation, for there, mouldered with the must of years, lay two thousand scalps, long tresses of women, children's golden curls, and the wiry locks of men, thrown into that official cellar in those awful days that now were ended.
The merry Frenchmen on their pipestem farms,—for every inhabitant owned his pathway down to the river,—the merry Frenchmen went on grinding their corn by their old Dutch windmills, went on pressing their cider in their gnarled old apple orchards. They could not change the situation if they would, and they would not if they could. The lazy windmills of Detroit swung round and round as if it had been ever thus. S
