Sometimes we could procure an armful of buckwheat straw to lie upon, which was deemed a luxury. Provisions, as usual, took up but a small part of our time, though much of our thoughts.
We arrived on our wintering ground in the latter part of the month of December, and once more, like the wild animals, began to make preparations to build us a "city for habitation." The soldiers, when immediately going about the building of their winter huts, would always endeavour to provide themselves with such tools as were necessary for the business, (it is no concern of the reader's, as I conceive, by what means they procured their tools,) such as crosscut-saws, handsaws, frows, augers, &c. to expedite the erection and completion of their dwellingplaces. Do not blame them too much, gentle reader, if you should chance to make a shrewd Yankee guess how they did procure them; remember, they were in distress, and you know when a man is in that condition, he will not be over scrupulous how he obtains relief, so he does obtain it.
We encamped near our destined place of operation and immediately commenced. It was upon the southerly declivity of a hill; the snow, as I have already observed, was more than a foot deep, and the weather none of the warmest. We had to level the ground to set our huts upon; the soil was a light loam. When digging just below the frost, which was not deep, the snow having fallen early in the season, we dug out a number of toads, that would hop off when brought to the light of day as lively as in summer time. We found by this where toads take up their winter-quarters, if we can never find where swallows take up theirs.
As this will be the last time that I shall have occasion to mention my having to build huts for our winter habitations, I will, by the reader's leave, just give a short description of the fashion and manner of erecting one of those log towns.
After the ground was marked out by the Quartermasters, much after the same manner as for pitching tents in the field, we built the huts in the following manner.—Four huts, two in front and two in the rear, then a space of six or eight feet, when four more huts were placed in the same order, and so on to the end of the regiment, with
