a fish-hook fastened to the end of a rod;—we continued at this business three or four hours, and when we came out of the water the pustules of the small pox were well cleansed. We then returned to the barracks, and I, feeling a pretty sharp appetite after my expedition, went to the side of the brook where the nurses had been cooking and eating their dinners; I found a kettle standing there half full of stewed peas, and, if I remember rightly, a small piece of pork with them. I knew the kettle belonged to the nurses in our room, and therefore conceived myself the better entitled to its contents; accordingly I fell to and helped myself. I believe I should have killed myself in good earnest, had not the owners come and caught me at it, and broke up my feast. It had like to have done the job for me as it was; I had a sorry night of it, and had I not got rid of my freight, I know not what would have been the final consequences of my indiscretion.
I left the hospital on the sixteenth day after I was inoculated, and soon after joined the regiment, when I was attacked with a severe turn of the dysentery, and immediately after recovering from that, I broke out all over with boils; good old Job could scarcely have been worse handled by them than I was;—I had eleven at one time upon my arm, each as big as half a hen's egg, and the rest of my carcass was much in the same condition. I attributed it to my not having been properly physicked after the small pox; in consequence of our hospital stores being in about the same state as the commissary's.
In the latter part of the month of June, or the beginning of July, I was ordered off in a detachment of about a hundred men, under the command of a Captain, to the lines near King's bridge, to join two regiments of New-York troops which belonged to our brigade. Upon the march (which was very fatiguing, it being exceeding hot weather) we halted to rest. I went into a house, hoping to get something to eat, of which I, as usual, stood in much need. The woman of the house had just been churning; I asked her for a drink of buttermilk; she told me to drink as much as I pleased. I drank as much as I could swallow and went out, but soon after returned and drank again; and as we staid here some hours, I
