History of the Fenian raid on Fort Erie with an account of the Battle of Ridgeway/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
THE SCENE OF OPERATIONS.
The Niagara frontier has always been, and always will be, a point on which an army directing its efforts against Canada from the United Stales would in all probability march and endeavour to effect a crossing, and it will be advisable here to give an explanation of the relative positions of the important points, in order to enable the reader the better to understand the movements which took place.
The Niagara River leaves the lower end of Lake Erie at Buffalo, and running in a general northerly direction for about thirty-five miles, empties itself into Lake Ontario. About four miles from Lake Erie the river is divided by Grand Island, the main channel running between the Canadian shore and the Island. At the fool of Grand Island lies Navy Island, on the Canadian side, it being about fifteen miles from Lake Erie and about one and a-half miles above the Falls. From the Falls to Queenston, some seven or eight miles, the river flows precipitously between perpendicular banks some 250 feet high; at Queenston the banks diminish to some sixty feet in height, and the river flows smoothly for eight miles into Lake Ontario. Two miles from the Falls is the Suspension Bridge, the only means of crossing between Chippewa and Queenston.
The Welland Canal, which connects Lakes Erie and Ontario, runs from Port Colborne on Lake Erie, distant about seventeen miles from Fort Erie, northery through the villages of Welland, Port Robinson, and Thorold, to St. Catharines, and thence to Port Dalhousie on Lake Ontario, following a course nearly parallel to the Niagara River, and at an average distance of about thirteen miles from it. The Welland River, running from the west at right angles to the Niagara River, intersects the canal at Welland, and empties into the Niagara at Chippewa just above the Falls. It will be seen from this that there is a square section of country enclosed between the Welland Canal and the Niagara River, and Lake Erie and the Welland River. It may here be mentioned that the Welland River is navigable from where it intersects the canal to its mouth. Between Port Robinson and the Niagara River there are only three bridges on the Welland River—two, the railway and the carriage road bridges, side by side at Chippewa, and the other four miles up at a place called Montrose.
The section of country which has just been described was the scene of the whole operations of the Fenian and Canadian forces, and it is very well intersected with railways. First there is the old Buffalo and Lake Huron Road, now called the Grand Trunk Railway, which connects with the Great Western at Paris and runs through Port Colborne along the lake shore to Fort Erie; Second, the Welland Railway which unites Lakes Erie and Ontario, running from Port Dalhousie along the Welland Canal to Port Colborne; and lastly, the Erie and Ontario Railway, just finished, which runs from Fort Erie along the bank of the Niagara River to the town of Niagara on Lake Ontario.
It should be remembered that only a few miles of the Niagara River frontier between Fort Erie and the Bridge was open to attack. Grand Island, for a long distance, covered the Canadian shore from a crossing, for the following reason: Grand Island is sparsely settled, and there is no harbour and no vessels ever lying on the Canadian side of it, consequently an enemy must come around the lower end of it, between there and the Falls, a distance of some two miles, or else cross above, between it and Fort Erie, a space of some four miles. This peculiar conformation of the river in reality gives only six miles available for crossing, out of some twenty miles in length.