Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/205

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
FALLEN TIMBER
201

the brown leaves, to fathom his purposes.

The lateness of the season prevented a more elaborate campaign than Wayne had suggested to the Secretary of War. The army swept northward to Greenville Creek and on the present site of Greenville, Ohio, erected Fort Greenville—named by Wayne in honor of his dead friend General Nathaniel Greene of Revolutionary fame. By November 16, Posey records, all the houses were completed and once more the drilling and manœuvering began. We have it under the hand of the same authority that General Wayne affirmed that never in the Revolutionary War had he commanded such well-drilled troops as these which spent the winter with him buried deep in those Ohio forests. It is sure that a general never needed well-drilled soldiers more; and no less sure that no troops needed encouragement more than these. There were, however, the bright sides to life even here. Though coffee was a dollar and brown sugar seventy-five cents a pound, and whiskey five dollars a gallon, yet there was good cheer and merrymaking. A battery was built for the officers to play "fiver,"