Expedition through the Wilderness to Quebec.
Arnold was now unemployed, but a project was soon set on foot suited to his genius and capacity. General Washington had taken command of the army at Cambridge. The Continental Congress had resolved that an incursion into Canada should be made by the troops under General Schuyler. To facilitate this object, a plan was devised about the middle of August, by the Commander-in-chief and several members of Congress then on a visit to the army during an adjournment of that body, to send an expedition to Quebec through the eastern wilderness, by way of the Kennebec River, which should eventually cooperate with the other party, or cause a diversion of the enemy, that would be favorable to its movements. Arnold was selected to be the conductor of this expedition, and he received from Washington a commission of colonel in the Continental service. The enterprise was bold and perilous, encompassed with untried difficulties, and not less hazardous in its execution, than uncertain as to its results. These features, repelling as they were in themselves, appeared attractive in the eyes of a man, whose aliment was glory, and whose spirit was sanguine, restless, and daring. About eleven hundred effective men were detached and put under his command, being ten companies of musketmen from New England, and three companies of riflemen from Virginia and Pennsylvania. The field-officers, in addition to the chief, were Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Greene, afterwards the hero of Red Bank, Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Enos, and Majors Bigelow and Meigs. At the head of the riflemen was Captain Daniel Morgan, renowned in the subsequent annals of the war.
These troops marched from Cambridge to Newburyport, where they embarked on board eleven transports, September 18th, and sailed the next day for the Kennebec River. Three small boats were previously despatched down the coast, to ascertain if any of the enemy's ships of war or cruisers were in sight. At the end of two days after leaving Newbury port, all the transports had entered the Kennebec, and sailed up the river to the town of Gardiner, without any material accident. Two or three of them had grounded in shoal water, but they were got off uninjured. A company of carpenters had been sent from Cambridge, several days before the detachment left that place, with orders to construct two hundred batteaux at Pittston, on the bank of the river opposite to Gardiner. These were now in readiness, and the men and provisions were transferred to them from the shipping. They all rendezvoused a few miles higher up the river at Fort Western, opposite to the present town of Augusta.
Here the hard struggles, sufferings, and dangers were to begin. Eleven hundred men, with arms, ammunition, and all the apparatus of war, burthened with the provisions for their sustenance and clothing to protect them from the inclemencies of the weather, were to pass through a region uninhabited, wild, and desolate, forcing their batteaux against a swift current, and carrying them and their contents on their own shoulders around rapids and cataracts, over craggy precipices, and through morasses, till they should reach the French settlements on the Canada frontiers, a distance of more than two hundred miles.
The commander was not ignorant of the obstacles with which he had to contend. Colonel Montresor, an officer in the British army, had passed over the same route fifteen years before, and written a journal of his tour, an imperfect copy of which had fallen into the hands of Arnold. The remarks of Montresor afforded valuable hints. He came from Quebec, ascending the Rivers Chaudière and Des Loups, crossing the highlands near the head-waters of the Penobscot, pursuing his way through Moosehead Lake, and entering the Kennebec by its eastern branch. He returned up the western branch, or Dead River, and through Lake Megantic into the Chaudière. This latter route was to be pursued by the expedition. Intelligence had likewise been derived from several St. Francis Indians, who had recently visited Washington's camp, and who were familiar with these interior regions. Two persons had been secretly despatched towards Quebec as an exploring party, from whom Arnold received a communication at Fort Western. They had proceeded no farther than the headwaters of the Dead River, being deterred by the extravagant tales of Natanis, called "the last of the Norridgewocks," who had a cabin in that quarter, and who was then probably in the interest of the enemy, though he joined the Americans in their march. Colonel Arnold had moreover been furnished with a manuscript map and a journal by Mr. Samuel Goodwin of Pownalborough, who had been a resident and surveyor in the Kennebec country for twenty-five years.
From these sources of information Colonel Arnold was as well prepared, as the nature of the case would admit, for the arduous task before him. While the preparations were making at Fort Western for the departure of the army, a small reconnoitring party of six or seven men was sent forward in two birch canoes under the command of Lieutenant Steel, with orders to go as far as Lake Megantic, or Chaudière Pond as it was sometimes called, and procure such intelligence as they could from the Indians, who were said to be in that neighborhood on a hunting excursion; and also Lieutenant Church with another party of seven men, a surveyor, and guide, to take the exact courses and distances of the Dead River. Next the army began to move in four divisions, each setting off a day before the other, and thus allowing sufficient space between them to prevent any interference in passing up the rapids and around the falls. Morgan went ahead with the riflemen; then came Greene and Bigelow with three companies of musketeers; these were followed by Meigs with four others; and last of all was Enos, who brought up the rear with the three remaining companies.
Having seen all the troops embarked, Arnold followed them in a birch canoe, and pushing forward he passed the whole line at different points, overtaking Morgan's advanced party the third day at Norridgewock Falls.
At a short distance below these falls, on the eastern bank of the river, was a wide and beautiful plain, once the site of an Indian village, belonging to a tribe from whom the falls took their name, and memorable in the annals of former days as the theatre of a tragical event, in which many of the tribe were slain in a sudden attack, and among them Father Ralle, the venerable and learned missionary, who had dwelt there twenty-six years. The foundations of a church and of an altar in ruins were still visible, the only remaining memorials of a people, whose name was once feared, and of a man who exiled himself from all the enjoyments of civilization to plant the cross in a savage wilderness, and who lost his life in its defence. Let history tell the story as it may, and let it assign such motives as it may for the conduct of the assailants, the heart of him is little to be envied, who can behold unmoved these melancholy vestiges of a race extinct, or pass by the grave of Ralle without a tear of sympathy or a sigh of regret.
But we must not detain the reader upon a theme so foreign from the purpose of our narrative. Justice claimed the tribute of this brief record. At the Norridgewock Falls was a portage, where all the batteaux were to be taken out of the river and transported a mile and a quarter by land. The task was slow and fatiguing. The banks on each side were uneven and rocky. It was found that much of the provisions, particularly the bread, was damaged. The boats had been imperfectly made, and were leaky: the men were unskilled in navigating them, and divers accidents had happened in ascending the rapids. The carpenters were set to work in repairing the most defective boats. This caused a detention, and seven days were expended in getting the whole line of the army around the falls. As soon as the last batteau was launched in the waters above, Arnold betook himself again to his birch canoe with his Indian guide, quickly shot ahead of the rear division, passed the portage at the Carratunc Falls, and in two days arrived at the Great Carrying-place, twelve miles below the junction of the Dead River with the eastern branch of the Kennebec. Here he found the two first divisions of the army.