THE CAMP-FIRE AT MOUNT INDEPENDENCE (continued)

"I suppose this great Carrying-Place was where you left the Kennebec and travelled overland. Wasn't it?" asked Bob.

"Yes; there we were to leave the Kennebec, and transport all the bateaux, provisions, and baggage, on our shoulders till we got to Dead river. the distance was about fifteen miles, and thee was three small ponds to cross."

"Phew!" exclaimed bob. "What a job!"

"Yes, you my well 'phew,' Bob, "said the narrator. "You would have blowed a great deal more, if it had been your lot to have been with us. We took the boats out of the water, with all their contents, and shouldered them. The road we marched along was a sort of hilly and rough, for the whole three miles that we had to travel till we reached the first pond. I tell you, it made the sweat run, although he weather was beginning to get chilly. However, we got over it at last, and took a short rest while the boats were launched. I forgot to tell you, that we left a small party of carpenters near the banks of the Kennebec, to build a block-house for depositing provisions in; --- some had been ordered up from Norridgewock, and they were intended as a supply, in case a retreat should be necessary. Well, we crossed the pond, and marched on, carrying our boats and their contents over rocks and through creeks, and morasses, and deep ravines, till we reached Dead River. There is no use of telling you all that we endured in the march; in fact, I couldn't. when we reached Dead River, we were completely worn out, and I laid at length on the ground to rest, as most of the men did. At the second portage of the Great Carrying-Place, a block-house was built, where the sick were left. Some of the men had caught a great quantity of trout in the ponds we had crossed, and these made a splendid feast for us. We had some oxen with us, which had been brought along to help carry some of the baggage, but were of very little use. Two of them were ordered to be killed, and the meat divided among the men. That was another delicious feast. Our hard work had earned it, though. We didn't stop there long. We thought we would have an easy time in moving along the smooth stream which was called the Dead River. It had a gentle current, with here and there a fall of short descent, at which were carrying-places. We moved quietly and slowly along, resting from our previous oil, when suddenly a lofty mountain appeared in the distance; the summit whitened with snow. As we neared it, the river was observed to pursue a winding course near its base. There we stopped and encamped, near the base of the mountain, for two or three days. Then we had a good rest. Morgan's riflemen went forward; while he third and fourth divisions had not yet arrived. Here it was that Colonel Arnold hoisted the American flag over his tent. Major Bigelow, who commanded a part of our division, took a small party and ascended the mountain, with the hope of seeing the hills of Canada, or the spire of Quebec; but he was disappointed, I believe. From this encampment, a party of ninety men was sent back to the rear for provisions, which were beginning to grow scarce, and then we moved on after Morgan. We had jus got started again, when it commenced to rain; and it continued to rain for three days. Every man, and all the baggage, was drenched with water. It must be remembered that the water was very chilly at that time of the year, and so far north."

"I should think it was," remarked John. "It was in October; wasn't it?"

"Yes," replied bill. "One night, after we had landed at a pretty later hour, and had just got fixed to take a little sleep, we were roused by a freshet. The water came rushing upon us in a torrent, and hardly allowed us time to get away, before the ground in which we had lain down was overflowed; and the water kept on rising. In nine hours, the river rose eight feet. Everything seemed to operate against us. The current became very rapid. The stream had spread itself over the low grounds, by its tremendous increase, and that exposed our boats to being all the time tangled in the drift-wood and bushes. Sometimes we would get out of the main stream, into the smaller branches, in mistake, and then we would have to retrace our course; and then again, we came across so many portages, that we got along very slow. At length a disaster happened that came near upsetting the whole expedition. The water was tumbling, and boiling, and rushing with such force, that seven of our boats were thrown over, and all their contents lost. This, of course, made such a breach in the quantity of our provisions, that the men began to get disheartened. It was ascertained that we were thirty miles from the head of the Chaudiere river. The provisions we had left would serve for twelve or fifteen days. Arnold called a council of war of all the officers that had come up so far, and they decided that the sick and the feeble should be sent back, and the others press forward. Accordingly, Arnold wrote to colonel Enos, who was in the rear, and ordered him to select such a number of his strongest men as he could supply with fifteen days' provisions, and to come on with them, leaving the others to return to Norridgewock. We learned afterwards that Enos had retreated with his whole division, consisting of three companies. Why he done it, I can't say, unless he misunderstood the order of Colonel Arnold."

"Did he return to Norridgwock with his men?" enquired bob.

"To Norridgewock! He retreated all the way back to Cambridge. It's my private opinion that he didn't want to understand the order. I heard he was tried by a court-martial soon after his return; but not having the true state of the case from Arnold, at the time of the trial, he was acquitted on the ground of a want of provisions. After the order was despatched to Colonel Enos, Arnold chose sixty men, the command being given to Colonel Hanchet; intending to proceed as soon as possible to the inhabitants on the Chaudiere, and send back provisions to the main forces. The rain changed into snow --- the first we had met with. All our former sufferings were as nothing, compared with what we began to endure then. Cold and hunger attacked us at the same time. Ice formed on the water through which we were obliged to drag our boats. Finally, we reached the highlands that separate the eastern waters from those of the St. Lawrence. How we done it, I can't give you an idea. Near the source of the Dead River, we had to pass through a string of small lakes, choked with logs and other things. We had met with seventeen falls in the whole distance of the Dead river, around which were portages, and had lost a number of our boats. The carrying-place over the highlands was a little more than four miles; but as small as the distance was the men of our division were so worn-out with their toil that they found a terrible piece of work. We reached a small stream, at last, that led us by a very crooked course into Lake Megantic, which is the source of the Chaudiere River."

"How many was in your party, then?" enquired Bob.

"I don't know exactly how many there was," answered bill. "We had three companies in our division. Morgan's riflemen were just ahead of us, and Meigs' four companies a short distance behind. Arnolds party of sixty men had gone far ahead of us. You must recollect that the whole party were on short allowance of provisions all the time since we left the encampment. Lake Megantic is thirteen miles long and about four broad, and is surrounded by high mountains. I think it was the night after we got into it we encamped on the eastern bank, where there was a large Indian wigwam. I was one of the lucky ones that got under its cover, and I had a tolerable night's rest --- a rare thing since I left home. The next morning we went on; a portion by land, on account of the loss of their boats. Well, our provisions were getting less and less every day, and the men getting weaker. When we reached the Chandiere River, we had still about a hundred miles to travel before there were any provisions to be obtained. There we shared the last of our stock, and it only gave four pints of flour to a man. Most of the boats we had left were leaky, and didn't promise to hold out much longer. It wasn't intended that they should; for we had encountered the greatest kind of dangers. The bottom was rocky, and falls and rapids were plenty. We had just reached a rapid, where we discovered the wreck of some boats that had been dashed to pieces, it appeared by the violence of the rushing of the water over the rocks, and were wondering what had become of the advance party, when from bad management, or some other cause, most of our boats were upset, and met the same fate as the ones we had seen. The men that were in them, we rescued with a great deal of trouble; but most of the baggage was carried away by the rapid water. Then we all had to take to the toils of the land. Through woods so thick with underwood that we had to cut our way, sometimes for five miles at a time; through swamps, where we sank into the mud almost up to the waist; over rocks and crags that cut our feet, we toiled for the rest of the distance we had to travel. Morgan, and Greene, and Meigs, and Bigelow, worked as hard as the rest of the men, and kept cheering us on all the time, by telling us about the glory we would acquire by our march through the wilderness; and showing us that we couldn't be very far from a settlement. I don't know what the rest thought but I had an idea that if glory was to be purchased at such a rate as that, it might stay in the market altogether, for what I cared. Well, we made slow progress, and at length our provisions gave out entirely. Then we suffered awfully. I had a pair of moose-skins moccasins, that I got from an Indian that was with the party; and --- it's a fact, I did do it --- I actually boiled them, to see if I could get any nourishment from them! Some of the men done the same with their cartridge-boxes. All the dogs that were with the army were killed; and that reminds me of a little incident. I had a friend among the company with, by the name of Joe Harwood. You might have heard of Joe. He was a tall, slim fellow --- at least he was slim then. He had light hair and blue eyes."

The listeners all professed an ignorance of an individual of that name, though each one knew a tall, slim fellow, with light hair and blue eyes.

"Well," continued Bill, "he was as clever a fellow as I ever knew. Joe had a fine spaniel dog that had been with him during the whole journey. The dog was attached to him, and Joe thought a good deal of it. When he would lay down of a night to sleep in the woods, that dog would keep watch over him till he awoke. He was always at his side; and when the boats had been dashed to pieces on the rocks in the Chaudiere River, he done more than any of the men to get Joe out of the water. Well, Joe was almost starving. All the dogs that had been brought with us had been killed but Jock; that was the name he called the dog. Joe couldn't think of killing Jock. It seemed almost like stabbing himself; but he had nothing to eat. The dog might die, perhaps, and he might die, too. I told him that he had better kill the dog, or it would starve to death. At last, when Joe had got so weak that he couldn't stand it any longer, he determined to shoot Jock. He tied him to a tree; the dog playing with him, as if he was going to have some sport. Then Joe went about ten yards from the tree, and raised his gun to shoot; but just then the dog looked at him in such a way, that Joe dropped his gun, and told me that i would have to do it --- he couldn't. He went up to the dog, and patted him on the head. I took the gun, and as Joe turneld away from Jock, and the dog was looking at him, I shot him through the head, and he dropped dead without a struggle. Joe walked away, with the tears trickling down his hollow cheek, as if he had lost a child."

"It's a desperate hard thing to treat a dog in that way, after you've got to likin' him," said one of the men. "I know from tryin' it."

"Well, I suppose you eat the dog; didn't you?" enquired Bob. "If you saved your own lives, the dog's life was of little account."

"Yes, we did eat the dog; and that is what Joe and I lived on for the rest of the march. We had got split up into small parties in going through the woods. The one I was with was the farthest one ahead. I think it was in the afternoon of a very cold day, we were working our way slowly through the woods near the river, when we came in sight of a party of Canadians and Indians, who were resting themselves in an open space in the woods. We pressed on joyfully to them, and they turned out to be a party that Arnold had sent back to us with flour and some cattle. You never saw such an overjoyed set of men in your life as ours were. They were so glad to get something to eat, that they hugged each other. One by one the parties came up, and received some provisions; and then, having refreshed ourselves, we pushed on with vigor. As much as we rejoiced at our relief, we rejoiced still more when we caught sight of houses where human beings lived. We came out of the woods in small parties at a time, and the inhabitants received us well. At first they were stuck with astonishment to see men who had performed such a march through a wilderness where a white man's foot had scarcely trod. They reported strange stories about us. Some said that we were cased in iron, and that there was about twice as many of us as there really was. They all treated us kindly. Some of the men had worn-out their clothes to rags; and these the Canadians clothes. The sick they attended with great care. In fact, we couldn't have received better treatment if we had been at home."

"How long did the march through the wilderness require?" asked Bob.

"We left Newburyport, in the transports, on the 18th of September, and arrived at the first Canadian settlement on the 4th of November. Arnold had arrived on the 30th of October," replied Bill, after a short pause.

"Had you lost many of the party, besides Enos' division? Enquired John.

"I don't know what the return was just after we finished our march; but I know that a short time afterwards, six hundred and seventy-five men was all we could muster."

"That was a huge decrease," said bob. "You started from Cambridge with an army of more than a thousand men, I understood."

"Yes, but Enos is responsible for about half of the missing ones. The rest either died from fatigue and exposure, or deserted in the early part of our march,: was the reply.

"Well, it must be getting late," remarked bob. "Well hear more about this invasion some other time; won't we, Bill?"

"Yes, when some of the rest of you do your share of the talking," replied bill; "I'm so tired that I shall have to stop."

"We won't talk any more to-night, anyhow," said John. "I'm going to try to sleep to-night. We've been in continual alarm for the last two or three weeks; and now we can rest quietly."

"I'm with you," was the reply; and, one after another, the men sought their beds of straw. A blanket was the covering, and a knapsack the pillow, for each. The fire blazed cheerfully on the hearth, shedding the comforting influence upon the scene; and it did not require many moments to close the eyelids of the men, and "steep their senses in forgetfulness."