CHAPTER XIX
As Barclugh mounted his steed and cantered through Trenton, he saw happy children and old men, chickens and ducks at every household. Occasionally the housewife came to the side door and gazed with arms akimbo at the strange horse and rider.
There was much to occupy Barclugh’s thoughts as he rode over this road. A little over a year previous here the hirelings of George III laid down their arms to the intrepid Washington, and his mission was to overcome by means of money what Britain’s generals had lost at arms. The irony of the situation aroused his red blood. He quickened the pace of his horse as the blood surged through his body at the thoughts of the enormity of his undertaking.
Quickly he left the town and turned his direction toward Princeton. He knew that he was travelling on martial ground. He soon came to and had to cross the identical bridge that Washington had so gallantly defended against Cornwallis, whom he had sent to camp; but ere the morning, the thunder of American artillery in the rear at Princeton awoke the British to the fact that they were out-generalled.
Also the sleepy town of Princeton presented its scenes of disaster to Barclugh, who was riding along on his solitary journey of intrigue. Here he had to pass in view of Nassau Hall, where Washington’s force surrounded two hundred British and compelled them to surrender. On his way thither he had to pass over the road that Washington’s rear-guard had so successfully blocked to the British advance by chopping down timber across the roadway and by burning the bridges behind him.
The British representative gnashed his teeth to actually see how helpless was the situation of Washington’s band of barefooted patriots one day at Trenton, and the next how triumphant under the daring leader as he marched his little force to safety at Morristown Heights.
The question never was so vividly presented to mortal mind as now to Barclugh, to learn the foundation for such intrepid feats in the presence of thoroughly disciplined European forces. Americans had no training or discipline; so, how did they maintain such superiority with such inferior numbers?
As Barclugh had not journeyed in the heart of American territory without being wide-awake to every bit of character, he had not forgotten the injunction of old Samuel Whitesides to visit his son-in-law, Benjamin Andrews. His home was five miles north of Morristown. Here he could rest and perhaps learn something.
North of Princeton the country begins to grow abruptly hilly, and at Morristown veritable mountains occur, with broad valleys stretching to the northeast and southwest. But beyond Morristown the country grows hard to travel through. The ridges grow steeper, the settlers fewer, and the timber thicker. The streams find a chance to gurgle around the rocks and roar over the falls. The wilderness impressed Barclugh. As his horse, that was now jaded, carried him upon a ridge, he stood, to take in the extensive landscape. When ridge upon ridge met his eye the immensity of the Colonial territory grew to a realization upon his mind. His journey was more than a revelation to him; it was a conviction of how little the King’s advisers knew about the conditions in America, while gaming around the green tables at Brooks’.