town, to a fine plain, where we performed a variety of
military evolutions. We were furnished with a plenty
of blank cartridges, had eight or ten fieldpieces, and
made a great noise, if nothing more. About one or two
o'clock we ceased, and were supplied with a gill of rum
each; having had nothing to eat since the night before,
the liquor took violent hold, and there were divers queer tricks exhibited both by officers and men. I saw a Pennsylvania soldier staggering off with three espontoons on his shoulder, that he had gleaned up after some of his officers. This day was nearly equal to the whiskey scrape at the Schuylkill, in 1777.
In the month of June five thousand British and Hessian troops advanced into New-Jersey, burnt several houses in Elizabethtown and the Presbyterian meeting house and most of the village of Springfield; they also barbarously murdered, by shooting, Mrs. Caldwell, the wife of the Minister of that place;—what their further intentions were could not be ascertained by our commanders. Sometimes it was conjectured that they were aiming at a quantity of public stores deposited in Morristown; sometimes that it was for a diversion in favour of their main army, by endeavouring to amuse us till their forces could push up the North river and attack West point. Our army was accordingly kept in a situation to relieve either in case of an attack. While we remained in this situation our army was infested by spies from the British;—I saw three of those vermin, one day, hanging on one gallows. The enemy soon after recoiled into their shell again at New-York.
During these operations, we were encamped at a place called the Short-hills. While lying here, I came near taking another final discharge from the army in consequence of my indiscretion and levity. I was one day upon a camp guard; we kept our guard in the fields, and to defend us from the night dew, we laid down under some trees which stood upon the brink of a very deep gully; the sides and tops of the banks of this gully were covered with walnut or hickory saplings, three, four, or five inches diameter at their butts, and many of them were fifty or sixty feet in height. In the morning before the guard was relieved, some of the men (and I among the rest, to be sure, I was never far away when such kind
