CHAPTER VII.
THE MARCH THROUGH MAINE.
It was on Monday morning, September 11th, that Dick and Tom marched with their fellow riflemen from Prospect Hill, bound first for Newburyport, thence by sea for the mouth of the Kennebec River, and thence through the Maine wilderness into Canada and to Quebec.
The little army of 1,100 men, consisting of the two Pennsylvania rifle companies,—one from Cumberland County and one from Lancaster County,—Captain Morgan's company of Virginia riflemen, and two divisions of New England infantry, set forth in gay spirits. Its commander, Col. Benedict Arnold, of Connecticut, had recently arrived in Cambridge from his achievement with Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga, his deeds on Lake Champlain, and his capture of St. John's. He was a short, stout, ruddy, handsome man, with a face complacent but resolute. His soldiers admired his bravery, and the most ungovernable of them yielded to his great persuasiveness.
Dick found himself more immediately under the command of Capt. Daniel Morgan, who led the division composed of all three rifle companies; a large, strong man, whose usually severe mien softened on occasion into a singularly kindly one; a rigid disciplinarian, impetuous yet sagacious, easily aroused but soon calmed. Dick's own captain, William Hendricks, was tall and noble-looking, gentle and heroic in face and heart. The two lieutenants, John M'Cleland and Michael Simpson, were both old acquaintances of Dick's, the former being notable for his openness of character, the latter for his gaiety and his skill as a singer. Sergeant Grier was a faithful, reliable man, whose stout and intrepid wife accompanied him on the campaign and without difficulty kept the respect of the soldiers. The Lancaster company's captain, Matthew Smith, was soldierly and good-looking, but unlettered and turbulent. Two of his best men were a pair of adventurous youths no older than Dick,—Archibald Steele and John Joseph Henry.
Of the two New England divisions, one was under Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Greene, of Rhode Island, the other under Lieutenant-Colonel Enos, of Connecticut. But Dick, on the march, came little in contact with the Yankee troops.
Sleeping by the way on the first night of the expedition, the army reached the little town of Newburyport on Tuesday, and camped here several days, completing its equipment. It was joined here by several volunteers, including two young men named Aaron Burr and Matthew Ogden, and Colonel Arnold attached these two to his staff. On Monday afternoon, September 18th, the army embarked on ten transports, which set sail in the evening, and which, under a fair, strong breeze, reached the mouth of the Kennebec at dawn. Continuing on the transports a short distance up this river, to Gardiner, the army left them at Colonel Colborn's ship-yard, and proceeded in two hundred bateaux to Fort Western,—on whose site the city of Augusta was later built,—reaching that place on Saturday, September 23d, having camped by the river during the nights.
Here Colonel Arnold sent forward a pioneer party to explore the river and to blaze a way through the wilderness at each place where boats could not navigate and where the men would have to go by land. Dick openly envied the lucky fellows selected for this duty,—Steele, Henry, four more of Smith's men, and three of Morgan's. As, from the camp on a pine-clad slope, he watched them set out, he would have given much for a place in one of their two light birch-bark canoes, each of which was partly laden with pork, meal, and biscuit.
"Hoot toot, lad!" said MacAlister, divining the boy's feelings. "It's work enough ye're like to have, whether ye gang before or behint, ere ye set eyes on the inside of Quebec town!"
It was Dick's lot not to go behind. The rifle companies constituted the van of the army, and set out from Fort Western in their bateaux a day in advance of the second division, Greene's, which in turn by a day preceded Eno's division, the third and last. This order was to be maintained until the army should have gone some way up the Kennebec, marched to that stream's branch, the Dead River, proceeded thereon, and made thence to the Chaudiere, where all should unite for the advance on Quebec. Colonel Arnold waited at Fort Western till the last division was off, then took a canoe, with Indians at the paddles, passed the third and second divisions, and overtook the advance at Norridgewock Falls, in the country of the moose deer.