[142] Frothingham's "Siege," 104.
[143] Carcasses were hollow shells with several openings. They were filled with combustibles, and when thrown into a town were intended to set fire to buildings.
[144] Washington's communications to Congress were addressed to Hancock, as its President.
[145] He had paid in advance all who had enlisted.
[146] "Writings of Washington," iii, 238-241.
CHAPTER XIV
THE WINTER IN BOSTON
When the British army went into winter quarters it was nearly at the end of its difficulties concerning food. Supplies from England had been very meagre, and the occasional raids had provided poorly for the wants of the town. But since October matters had improved, largely because of the criticism of the English Whigs in Parliament. These pointed out the inactivity of the troops, the humiliation of the situation, the sickness and want in Boston. In order that nothing should be left undone to remedy the last, the perplexed ministry spent money lavishly to provision its garrison. Five thousand oxen, fourteen thousand sheep, with a great number of hogs, were purchased, and shipped alive. Vegetables, preserved by a new process, were bought in quantities; wheat and flour were collected; wood, coal, hay, and other fodder, with beer, porter, rum, Geneva, and the more innocent vinegar, were generously provided. To be sure, the commissions on all these purchases provided fortunes for the relatives of those in office, and the ship-owners found excuses for setting sail as late as possible, in order to increase the hire of their craft. As a result, much of the vast expense—some six hundred thousand pounds for provisions alone—was wasted. Contrary gales detained the ships; the live stock died by wholesale, and was thrown overboard; the vegetables spoiled; and numbers of the ships were lost outright. Others, arriving without convoy at the American coast, were captured by the watchful privateers. But of such vast supplies enough reached Boston to relieve the worst distresses of the inhabitants. Though the poorer of the Whigs had either to sign humiliating declarations in order to share in the rations of the troops, or else to continue on meagre fare, there was enough in the general market for the well-to-do among them to supply themselves. John Andrews, for instance, though he lived at the rate of six or seven hundred sterling a year, after October ate scarcely three meals of salt meat, "for I was determined to eat fresh provissions, while it was to be got, let it cost what it would."