I then observed that he was a member of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, and not a wet Quaker, neither – the sort who affect silver buckles on their shoes, lace ruffles at neck and wrist, and powder on their hair – but of the dry sort who wear drab, threadbare cloth coat and breeches, cotton stockings, and plain, square-toed shoes.
‘I was going out to the patch to commune with the Lord, praying Him to mitigate the suffering of this poor soldier’s wife,’ he said simply. ‘Wilt thou accompany me, friend, and join thy prayers to mine? For it is written that “When two or three are gathered together in Thy name” – here he lifted his eyes reverently to Heaven – “Thou wilt grant their request.” My inner voice assures me that thy steps were directed to my door for this very purpose.’
I answered nothing, but went with him; and presently we kneeled down together in the dews at the edge of a held of tall hemp which he had planted. There he began to pray with exceeding slowness, trembling in all his body as he wrestled with the words. They came out one by one, often in repetition, as if wrung from a strict compression of his heart: ‘Grant – O Lord – to this – my – poor – poor – sister – my – sister – now – O Lord – labouring – labouring – labouring – with child – cheerful – courage – now – oh – humble – courage – to endure – endure – O – Lord – to endure – the punishment – of her mother – her mother – who sinned – her mother – our mother – Eve – who – sinned – in Eden.’
‘Amen,’ said I greatly affected; and as we rose from our knees, the woman’s pangs lessened, for we heard the other comforting her and calling her ‘poor soul’ and ‘dear honey’. But the child was not yet born.
‘Who is the woman?’ I asked, in a low tone outside the door.
‘Friend, I do not know her name. She was brought to my house by a Mohican Indian, a follower of the Christian Thayendanegea, or Captain Brant, a chief of that nation. She affirms herself to be the wife of a soldier in the Ninth Regiment and relates that she was braving the perils of these woods alone and on foot, from Montreal, in order to come up with him. She was seized, she says, with the sickness of labour in the forest, where she must have perished had the Indian not found her and brought her to me. Yet I wonder that she is dressed in Mohican fashion, not in English dress.’
The Quaker woman then emerging, I asked her trembling: ‘Will she live? Does all go well?’
She replied shortly, ‘With God’s help. There is nothing amiss.’
The pangs began again at that moment, and the woman returned to the house. I was so torn with emotion that I caught at the Quaker’s sleeve and, cried I, ‘Come back, sir, to the hemp patch, and let us wrestle this out together.’
He was nothing loath, and turned back with me.
I do not know what I prayed in my agony of heart, but the honest man knelt by me and cried, ‘Amen, Amen!’ to my wild outpourings, until the cries from the cabin ceased; and presently the woman in the bonnet came out with a little creature wrapped in a cloth and, says she, ‘Josiah, O Josiah, kiss ’un, the sweet little girl.’
Josiah took and kissed the child fervently, and so did I, with indescribable emotions. ‘The mother is sleeping now,’ the woman said.
I told the good Quaker, who begged me to enter his house and partake of a dish of tea: ‘No, I thank you, Friend Josiah – for a true friend you have been to me – I cannot accept. I must go forward to Fort George, according to my orders. Direct me, I beg, for I am lost.’
He said piously, ‘No man is lost who loves God and his neighbour.’ Now that dawn was at hand, he showed me the path plainly, and I thanked him.
I said, ‘Friend Josiah, tell the woman, whoever she may be, that Sergeant Roger Lamb of The Ninth will be passing this way again in about four days’ time, with a party of men, and will be happy to convey her to the army in one of the wagons. And tell her this, that I wish her and the child well, from the bottom of my heart.’
I made him repeat these words exactly after me, shook hands with him in affectionate farewell, and directed my steps towards Fort George.
I reached this place as the sun rose; and upon my presenting to the officer in charge of the garrison my letter from General Burgoyne, he provided me with a captured American batteau to take me up Lake George to Ticonderoga. The Canadians called this lake by the elder name of Lake Sacrament, from the purity of its water, which they were in former times at the pains to procure for sacramental use in their churches. The bed was of fine white sand, giving a pellucid clearness to the lake, which was four-and-thirty miles long and nowhere more than four miles wide. Lake George embosomed above two hundred islands, which were for the most part but barren heath-covered rocks garnished with a few cedar and spruce trees. There was abundance of fish here, such as the black bass and a beautiful large speckled trout, remarkable for the carnation of its flesh. I drowsed rather than slept in my passage through this romantic waterway, which was performed in the finest weather.
We went ashore at Diamond Island with a message for the Captain in charge of the stores-depot there. The island was so called from the transparent crystals that abounded in the rocks upon it. A soldier of The Forty-Seventh presented me with one which he had found lying loose in the sand, consisting of a six-sided prism, terminated at both ends by six-sided pyramids. When placed on a window-sill in the sun it threw little rainbows on the walls and ceilings, he said. Diamond Island was once overrun with rattlesnakes, whose sloughed skins lay about on all sides, and was in consequence avoided by every one. However, one evening a batteau conveying a herd of hogs was caught in a storm while sailing near by and overset. The Canadians and the hogs swam together to the shore, where the former spent the night in the trees and the latter ran off earnestly grunting. The next day the Canadians hailed a passing vessel and were taken off: but some time later, returning to the island, they found the hogs immensely fat, and hardly a single rattlesnake remaining. When they slaughtered one of these hogs they found by what means the island had been rid of its noxious tenantry; for its stomach was full of the undigested remains of rattlesnakes.
Near Halfway Island I witnessed a curious sight, namely a migration of grey squirrels and black: of whom hundreds were attempting to swim across the lake, which was then as smooth as glass, from the western to the eastern shore. We passed a number of their drowned corpses; and others which we overtook, nearly exhausted, ran up into the batteau, upon our putting down an oar before them. The boatman secured a dozen of them and said that he would put little chains around them and tame them for pets. Their bushy tails had acted as a sort of float to support them in the water; but the legend that they will raise their tails to act as mast and sail in a breeze I judge ridiculous.
A great curiosity hereabouts was the double echo, which our boatman showed us by calling out in a shrill voice the name of his wife, Louise Marie, which was repeated in melancholy fashion by the curved sides of a mountain, from two distinct quartets at once. I confess that my heart cried, ‘Kate, Kate’ no less loud and longingly, though my tongue was silent.
For the rest of the journey I slept. A brisk southerly breeze, springing up, carried the boat swiftly forward under sail. Disembarking above the Falls, I made the rest of my journey on foot to Ticonderoga, by way of Mount Hope, passing by a camp of American prisoners of war and several storehouses, and arrived late that same night. I was a day completing my business at the Fort, and two days more in retracing my way down the lake. I now conducted a brigades of batteaux containing a great deal of baggage and stores, and recruits and convalescents to the number of sixty. In addition, a crowd of Canadian French came with me, supplied by General Carleton at General Burgoyne’s request, to work the batteaux on Hudson’s River. I urged upon my command the necessity of speed, and kept every man who could work an oar, busy in urging the craft forward.
While I was at Ticonderoga I noticed the remains of a bonfire that some of our young officers had made, of an enormous stack of paper-money issued by order of the American Congre
ss. Several tightly bound quires of bills, of high denomination, had remained unburned and hardly scorched. It occurred to me that it was as foolish an act to destroy these printed promises to pay in specie, as it would be to tear up a private note of hand. I therefore placed the bulk of them to store and took a commission for myself of five thousand dollars. The bills that I chose for myself were of twenty-dollar denomination, as being less bulky for my haversack, and had upon them a rude cut of a zephyr in a cloud disturbing the ocean waves, and the motto Vi Concitate, or ‘Disturb with force!’ I thought the device appropriate, though to raise the wind by the issue of such paper unbacked by specie was a doubtful procedure, and when the fraud was discovered by the common people was likely to cause great dissension. The four-dollar notes, which I rejected, showed a wild-boar running on a lance, with the printed sentiment, ‘Either death or a decent life’; it was not clear whether the Revolutionary cause was represented by the resolute lance or by the courageous boar.
Returning without adventure to Fort George, I hastened to call upon the Quaker Josiah, during the time that the wagons were being loaded from my brigade of batteaux.
I knocked at the door, my heart beating loudly against my ribs, and waited with the utmost impatience to be admitted. Receiving no reply to my summons, I pushed open the door. There was nobody at home, but a weak cry from an adjoining room sent me hurrying to where the child was lying in a cradle of maple-wood, its tiny body covered with gauze against the mosquitoes, and naked because of the great heat of the day. Around its neck was tied my Charles groat on a slight blue ribbon.
I could not wait, for my military business was urgent; but I had the good fortune to meet with Josiah half a mile from the hut. He informed me that the negress who attended his wife, an emancipated slave, had two days previously lost her infant, of a cough. Kate Harlowe had thereupon resigned the child to the care of this woman, and the guardianship of the good Quaker and his wife, saying that she herself had no milk to give it, nor was the battlefield any place for a mother and her new-born child. But her place as a wife was beside her husband. The very day after I left her there, Josiah said, she had bidden the family farewell and set out to meet her husband, though against their wishes and continued entreaties.
The Quaker turned and walked a little of the way with me back to the Fort. He spoke very honestly of the shortcomings of numbers of his coreligionists. Not only were there Wet Quakers, who loved the world too well, but (it seemed) there were even Free Quakers who bore arms in the war. Yet, he said, such plain murder – if I would forgive the term, being a soldier – was perhaps less heinous in the eyes of God than the hypocritical action of some of his former companions at Philadelphia. In refusing to serve in the wars, or to pay the tax imposed upon them for their refusal, they acted in conformity with their faith; but he detested that they had voted the sum of twenty thousand pounds for ‘wheat, barley, and other grains’, letting it be known that among ‘other grains’ might be counted those of gunpowder – and thus becoming accessories of murder. In disgust of which unrighteous folly he had left them, and come to live in the wilderness.
I asked him: ‘Friend Josiah, if you think me a murderer, why do you walk at my side in so social a fashion, and talk with me so pleasantly?’
He replied: ‘Our Lord, Jesus Christ Himself, did not hold himself apart from the Roman soldiers, nor even from a Centurion, their officer. And John the Baptist bade soldiers be content with their pay.’
‘If Saint John said that indeed, surely he was condoning murder? For the payment was for their being soldiers, namely for the practice of killing.’
He made no reply, but paced on with compressed lips.
I asked him again, thinking that perhaps he had not heard me: ‘Expound, Friend Josiah: why did he who was counted worthy to baptize the Saviour of Mankind thus address soldiers, bidding them be content with their pay?’
He answered, ‘Had even the Saviour Himself told them, “Thou shalt not kill”, they would have mocked at Him (though such was the command of the Father), for they had taken the soldiers’ oath to Caesar and could not unsay it. They were already murderers, as thou sayest. To them could be given no higher notion of virtue than they were capable to follow. And to thee, friend Roger, as my inner voice assures me, the Lord would not say, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” for thou knowest this commandment well, yet hast disobeyed it in a manner that cannot be undone. Instead, He would say, “Keep thy evil imaginings away from this woman, since she is the wife of another, and pray God that thou fallest not again into the same snare.”’
With that he grasped my hand, the tears wetting his cheeks, and left me. His last words were: ‘The child will be taught to worship God in this Wilderness.’
I returned very pensively to Fort George, where I made inquiries after Kate Harlowe, whose path would have led her past the outer sentinels; but she had not passed that way. I concluded that the sound of my name had refreshed her affections, and that she had returned to the company of the Mohican Indians rather than link herself again with her husband Harlowe, and thus bring equal pain upon herself and me.
The next evening I had the gratification of conveying the stores and baggage in safety to the army, and of being thanked by my officers for the manner in which I had executed the orders confided to me.
Chapter XXIII
BY MY conveyance of these stores, the army was the richer by a month’s supply; and the bridge of boats being thrown across Hudson’s River two miles above the village of Saratoga, on the 13th and 14th of September 1777 we crossed and encamped on Saratoga plain. Here the country was exceedingly beautiful but utterly deserted by its inhabitants. We of the Light Infantry formed the vanguard and, following down the opposing bank, soon came upon a delightful stream, the Fishkill Creek, peopled with exotic wildfowl, broken into artificial cascades, and trained around several tiny islands planted with unusual flowering shrubs. Beyond, a broad green lawn sloped easily down to the water’s edge, and at its head stood General Philip Schuyler’s spacious mansion, with a row of noble pillars extending its entire length from ground to roof. The mansion at Skenesborough had been very well, for so remote a place, but it was by comparison with this but a large and well-appointed block-house. This had both elegance and maturity and we saw clearly that the spirit of subordination, rather than that of ‘Liberty, Liberty, Liberty’ animated the General’s artisans and tenantry, whose cottages could be seen in the distance clustered around a good-looking church.
The transition from the hideous and unkempt country about Fort Edward to this European paradise was striking. We found ourselves treading with humility and soberness, as we flanked the lawn in order to search the house, avoiding to violate the well-tended flower-beds and the neat borders of the gravelled paths, and stopping delicately between the rows of cabbages. It might almost have been Castle Belan, near Timolin, which I had visited as a recruit on my march to Waterford; but that here painted wood was generally employed instead of bricks and stucco. The house was embellished within, as we had expected, with solid and beautiful furniture, rich hangings and carpets, china and silver in glass-fronted cupboards, of which but little appeared to have been moved. In the dining-room we observed two or three lifelike portraits of General Schuyler’s ancestors who were notable Dutchmen, and a fine equestrian portrait of His Majesty King George. Out of respect for the decency of these surroundings we abstained from plundering the least thing, but searched the attics, cellars, and outhouses, discovered nothing and passed on; but left a guard against the depredations of our Indian allies. The solid grist-mill, saw-mill, barns, and other buildings were also found clear of the enemy.
There was but one road in the neighbourhood, following the course of Hudson’s River down to Albany, thirty miles away: it was flanked by forests, commanded in many places by rocky heights and often separated from the broad flood of the river only by a precipice. This was the road we must take, and many tributary creeks and thick forests lay between us and our dest
ination; and, as a half-way obstacle, the deep and rapid Mohawk River. The enemy was encamped ten miles from us, at Stillwater, in a strongly entrenched position known as Bemis Heights. Our communications with Canada were long and exposed; we had with us but a month’s provisions; most of our Indian allies had left us; and what with the losses at Bennington and elsewhere, we were reduced to less than six thousand troops, including Germans and American Loyalists, against perhaps fourteen thousand of the enemy. The odds against us were increased by the greater discount that must be made in our case for men necessarily employed on other services than that of fighting: such as baggage and ammunition guards, and attendants upon the sick and wounded. Not three thousand of our men, of whom something better than two thousand were British, could be put into action at any given time; whereas the American fighting strength fell short of their total forces by far less. We did not, however, allow ourselves to consider the possibility of a check. Being ordered to attain Albany, there to join hands with our Southern army under General Howe, which was to advance up Hudson’s River, we were resolved at all hazards to reach this rendezvous before our supplies failed: where we would be once more provided with all necessaries.
A very disagreeable circumstance was that a diversion of ours, to the westward, had signally failed. This was made by Colonel St Leger, who had gone by way of Lake Ontario and taken with him a battalion of American Loyalists, a few regulars and a thousand Indians of the Six Nations, led by Thayendanegea, under the guidance of Colonel Guy Johnson’s brother, Sir John Johnson, Bt. Colonel St Leger routed and killed General Herkimer in a stubborn battle – though Thayendanegea was disappointed of his neighbour’s scalp – and besieged an American force at Fort Stanwix, which seemed upon the point of surrender; he hoped soon to possess himself of the whole valley of the Mohawk River, a place well known for the number of settlers who remained loyal to King George. But General Benedict Arnold upset all his plans by a cunning stratagem. He prevailed upon a half-witted Dutchman, Hon Yost Schuyler, whom the Indians, because of his peculiar ways, held in a sort of religious awe, to go among the Indians and announce with excitement the approach of an enormous army of Americans under General Arnold. This he did. The Indians were alarmed and inclined to believe this tale, for Hon Yost – who performed this cheat in order to save from the gallows his Tory brother, whom General Arnold held – displayed a coat riddled with what he said were British bullet-holes. Sir John and Thayendanegea pooh-poohed the tale, but it was confirmed by an Indian in Arnold’s pay who came up shortly afterwards; he, when asked, ‘Are the Americans few or numerous?’ pointed above his head at the leaves of the forest. After him came another Indian, whose lie was that General Burgoyne’s army was cut in pieces and General Arnold hurrying to Fort Stanwix by forced marches. Indians, though not cowards, have always sedulously avoided pitched battles, preferring to harry the flank and rear of an advancing foe. These tribesmen now, persuaded by The Cornplanter of the Senecas, immediately decamped, in spite of all the persuasive eloquence and rum that Sir John offered them; the Loyalists followed, and Colonel St Leger, left with only his few regulars, had no alternative but to break off the siege and retire too. Most of the Loyalists had flung away their arms in terror; so that the Indians, balked of other scalps, took a few of theirs in disgust of such cowardice. Among Indians, to lose even an arrow was considered unwarrior-like, and for the like misdoing or mischance a man was flogged on the bare back by his women folk. Sir John and the Colonel each blamed the other for the common misfortune and drew their swords upon each other. Murder would have been done had Thayendanegea not interposed and recalled them to their duty as Christians.