Page:The Adventures Of A Revolutionary Soldier.pdf/174

eatables, what we could not get from the public stores, we could make up in the woods. We had a large dog that we had brought from West point; we had no more to do than to go into the woods, which were quite handy, and when we came across the trail of a shoal of hogs, to set off old Bose, when we soon heard a crying out, and it was generally made by a black one, he having a particular regard or antipathy (he never told us which) for that colour. After the knife had passed the throat of the victim, we carried it to a frog pond, in the rear of our camp, and near our bakehouse, where, after evening roll call, we could fit it for eating, convey it to the baker where it was baked in prime order. We were on duty in the trenches twenty-four hours, and forty-eight hours in camp. The invalids did the camp duty, and we had nothing else to do, but to attend morning and evening roll calls, and recreate ourselves as we pleased the rest of the time, till we were called upon to take our turns on duty in the trenches again. The greatest inconvenience we felt, was the want of good water, there being none near our camp but nasty frog ponds, where all the horses in the neighbourhood were watered, and we were forced to wade through the water in the skirts of the ponds, thick with mud and filth, to get at water in any wise fit for use, and that full of frogs. All the springs about the country, although they looked well, tasted like copperas water, or like water that had been standing in iron or copper vessels. I was one day rambling alone in the woods, when I came across a small brook of very good water, about a mile from our tents; we used this water daily to drink, or we should almost have suffered. But it was "the fortune of war." I was one night in the trenches, erecting a bomb-battery, the enemy (it being very dark) were directed in their firing by a large tree. I was ordered by our officers to take two or three men and fell the tree with some old axes as dull as hoes; the tree was very large and we were two hours in cutting it, although we took Solomon's advice in handling dull tools, by "putting to the more strength," the British all the time urging us to exert ourselves with round and grape shot; they struck the tree a number of times while we were at work at it, but chanced to do us no harm at all. In the morning, while the relieves were coming into