[Illustration: Musket and saber]
_Daniel Morison's journal ends at this point. After July 2, 1772, we
lose sight of the unhappy surgeon's mate. It appears at least that he
did not remain much longer at the Straits for later that year the
various units of the Second Battalion of the Royal Americans were
assembled from Niagara, Fort Michilimackinac, and other frontier posts
and shipped off to serve in the balmier climate of the West Indies._
_Captain Turnbull retired from the army in 1775 by selling his
commission, but some of the others who had served at Michilimackinac
remained with the Royal Americans and fought in the Revolutionary War.
Turnbull's predecessor as commandant, Beamsley Glazier, distinguished
himself in the fighting around Savannah, Georgia, in 1779, by leading
three companies of the Royal Americans in a fierce charge which drove
the American and French forces into headlong retreat and caused the
Allies to lift their siege of the British troops in the city. Ensign
Johnson's erstwhile comrade-in-arms, John Christie, fought gallantly in
1780 at Mobile in a futile effort to beat off a Spanish attack on that
port. Christie thereby redeemed his reputation which had been badly
tarnished by his premature surrender to the Indians when he was in
command of a fort at present-day Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1763._
_Many changes took place at Michilimackinac after 1772, so many, in
fact, that John Askin, an old-time resident, in 1778 wrote to Thomas
McMurray, apparently the former acting sergeant-major who had retired to
a business in Montreal, that he would scarcely recognize the post any
more. In place of the drafty old houses, such as the ones Morison had
lived in, the people, Askin reported, were "now building tolerable good
ones."_
_The fort also had a new surgeon's mate--another Scotsman, David
Mitchell. Unlike his compatriot Morison, Mitchell adjusted very well to
the rough conditions of life on the fur-trading frontier. He married a
Chippewa woman, and when his regiment was transferred elsewhere he
received special permission to stay on as surgeon's mate so that his
wife would not be separated from her people. He remained in the area in
various capacities until his death in 1830. By then old Fort
Michilimackinac had been abandoned for a half century and only a few
ruins sticking out of the sand reminded the occasional visitor of the
colorful days of the 1760's and 1770's._
[Illustration: Michilimackinac Restored]