his men, he said, to go peaceably to their quarters; after a good deal of palaver, he ordered them to shoulder their arms, but the men taking no notice of him or his order, he fell into a violent passion, threatening them with the bitterest punishment, if they did not immediately obey his orders; after spending a whole quiver of the arrows of his rhetoric, he again ordered them to shoulder their arms, but he met with the same success that he did at the first trial, he therefore gave up the contest as hopeless, and left us and walked off to his quarters, chewing the cud of resentment all the way, and how much longer I neither knew nor cared. The rest of the officers, after they found that they were likely to meet with no better success than the Colonel, walked off likewise to their huts.
While we were under arms, the Pennsylvania troops, who lay not far from us, were ordered under arms and marched off their parades upon, as they were told, a secret expedition; they had surrounded us, unknown to either us or themselves, (except the officers,) at length, getting an item of what was going forward, they inquired of some of the stragglers, what was going on among the Yankees? Being informed that they had mutined on account of the scarcity of provisions,—"Let us join them," said they, "let us join the Yankees, they are good fellows, and have no notion of lying here like fools and starving." Their officers needed no further hinting; the troops were quickly ordered back to their quarters, from fear that they would join in the same song with the Yankees.—We knew nothing of all this for some time afterwards.
After our officers had left us to our own option, we dispersed to our huts, and laid by our arms of our own accord, but the worm of hunger knawing so keen kept us from being entirely quiet, we therefore still kept upon the parade in groups, venting our spleen at our country and government, then at our officers, and then at ourselves for our imbecility, in staying there and starving in detail for an ungrateful people, who did not care what became of us, so they could enjoy themselves while we were keeping a cruel enemy from them. While we were thus venting our gall against we knew not who, Colonel Stewart of the Pennsylvania line, with two or
