The Road to Paris: A Story of Adventure

by Robert Neilson Stephens

Dick now found himself in a wilderness more solitary and picturesque than his own Pennsylvania forests. The last cabin of white settlers had been left behind. Civilized habitation would not again be seen until the army should reach the French settlements in Canada. The river, pursuing a turbulent way among rocks and over cataracts, was set amidst solitudes of fir-trees, hemlocks, birch, and other species, and these crowned the eminences that rose now gently, and now abruptly, on every hand. Within sound of the eternal tumult of Norridgewock Falls, were the ruins of a deserted Indian village, and as Dick lay at night under his blanket on his bed of evergreen branches, listening to the noise of the waterfall, and of MacAlister's snoring, he would look through his tent opening and imagine the ghosts of bygone red men, or that of the good French priest, Father Ralle, who had come to this village in 1698, and been killed when a party from Massachusetts suddenly attacked the place in 1724.

It was the task of Dick and his fellow riflemen to open the way, remove impediments from the streams, learn the fords, explore the portages or carrying-places where, the waters not being navigable, the boats had to be carried over land, and free these last of obstructions. For this work their attire was more suitable than was such garb as Dick had discarded on joining them; it consisted of hunting-cap, flannel shirt, cloth or buckskin breeches, buckskin leggings, moccasins, and outside hunting-shirt of brown linsey-woolsey, with a belt in which a knife and a tomahawk were carried. Each of Morgan's men wore on his cap a front-piece inscribed with the words, "Liberty or Death." This ever present reminder to the men, of the cause for which they toiled and suffered, came not amiss. It was not from the rifle companies that the desertions occurred, which united with swamp-fever and fatigue to reduce the army to fewer than a thousand able men before October 13th.

Dick soon realized the truth of old Tom's prediction concerning hard work. At the times when some of the men marched along the river banks, while some forced the bad and heavy bateaux, with their loads of provisions and other supplies, up the rapid stream, the lot of the former, struggling through thickets and swamps and over rocks, was no worse than the lot of the latter, wading and pushing against the current, which oftentimes upset or swamped their boats, and damaged provisions, arms, and ammunition. More than once a whole day was spent in getting around some single cataract, the men unloading the cargoes, carrying them—and sometimes the boats also—on their shoulders, then relaunching and reloading for another tug against the swift stream. Before the Great Portage, from the Kennebec to the Dead River, had been traversed, Dick was inured to the life of an amphibious being, as well as to that of some swamp-infesting animal or of some inhabitant of the underbrush. His breeches and leggings were torn almost from his legs by thickets, which spared not the skin under them, and below the hips he was thoroughly water-soaked. But he still slept and ate well, there being at this time plenty of trout and salmon in the ponds and streams, with which to eke out the diet of pork, meal-cakes, and biscuit. As yet the weather, though cold at night, caused no suffering to a youth of Dick's hardiness, or to a veteran as well seasoned as MacAlister.

"I prophesy that will be the langest fifteen mile ye'll often gang over," said Old Tom, when he and Dick came to a halt at last on the bank of the Dead River, having put behind them the Great Portage and its three intervening lakelets, after days of dragging and pushing of boats over a rough ridge, and through ponds and bogs. "I gather from offeecial sources," continued the Fiddler, "that we're like to reach the Chaudiere River in eight or ten days, though I hae my doots, seeing it's mony a mile up this river we'll be ganging, and then over God knows what kind of country after that. Weel, weel, lad, it's Quebec or nothing now, if ye hauld out, for devil a bit will ony mon of us gang willingly back over the road we've come by!"

So jubilant were the men at having overcome the difficulties of the great carrying-place, that they whistled and jested as they launched their boats on the sluggish waters of the Dead River. They acted as if the end of their journey were in sight. Colonel Arnold had already sent an Indian messenger to General Schuyler, whose army from the province of New York had in August started under Montgomery from Ticonderoga to enter Canada below Montreal and eventually unite with Arnold's force before Quebec. The colonel thought to receive an answer to this letter on arriving at the Chaudiere.

"It's a blithe lot of men, true for ye, wi' their whistling and capering," said old Tom, in an undertone, as he and Dick stood recovering their breath after much pulling and shoving of boats. "All looks weel and bonny the day, but ye maun put nae trust in appearances. Do ye moind, ayont Curritunk, afore we left the Kennebec, how ye steppit sae merrily on the green moss that seemed to cover level ground for sae lang a stretch, and how ye found 'twas rotten bog beneath the surface, and full of them snags that tripped ye up and cut your feet in the devil's ain way? Mony's the mon like that,—and woman, too!"

Up the Dead River for eighty-three miles the army proceeded, the riflemen still leading. Seventeen times they had to unload their boats and carry the loads past places that were not navigable. On this part of the journey the men were assailed by rains and cold weather. Lieutenant M'Cleland, more fragile in body than in spirit, was one of many whose constitutions began to yield to these assaults. With a cold in the lungs, he toiled on, performing his duties and refusing aid, until his increasing weakness compelled him to relinquish the former and accept the latter, on his comrades' insistence and his captain's orders. When the chosen route departed from the Dead River, to cross a mountain, M'Cleland was placed on a litter and so carried forward.

"If I can only hold out till we enter Quebec!" he said from his litter, one bleak, drizzling day, while Captain Hendricks, Dick, MacAlister, and others bore him up the wooded mountain-side,—for the captain took his turn at the litter with the others.

Captain Hendricks cheerily said there could be no doubt of that, and Lieutenant Simpson, who happened to be walking immediately behind the litter, predicted that the sufferer would begin to mend as soon as the troops should reach the Chaudiere, and reminded him, for the tenth time, that a boat was being carried across the mountain purposely to take him down that river while his comrades should march along the banks.

The lieutenant brightened up at this reassurance that he was not to be left behind,—as more than one ailing man had necessarily been,—and, turning his eyes to Dick, said: