(unless I happened to fall over the fence, which I do not remember to have done) and wading in, and being wet with the water of the river. I roasted some of my turnips, ate them, rolled myself up in my innocency, lay down on the leaves and forgot my misery till morning.
Soon after this affair our two Connecticut regiments (they being the only troops of that State then with the main army) were ordered off to defend the forts on the Delaware river, below the city. We marched about dark, hungry and cold, and kept on till we could proceed no further, from sheer hunger and fatigue. We halted about one o'clock at night, in a village, and were put into the houses of the inhabitants, much, I suppose, to their contentment, especially at that time of night. Sleep took such strong hold of me and most of the others, that we soon forgot our wants. Not so with some five or six of our company, who were determined not to die of hunger that night, if any means could be devised to prevent it. They, therefore, as soon as all was still, sallied out on an expedition. They could not find any thing eatable but the contents of a beehive, which they took the liberty to remove from the beehouse to a place which they thought more convenient. I had no hand in the battle and consequently no share in the spoil. One man who belonged to this foraging party had rather an uncouth visage; he had very thick lips, especially the upper one, a large flat nose, and quite a wide mouth, which gave him, as the Irishman said, really an open countenance. One of the inhabitants of the city he had helped to sack, not quite forgetting his resentment for the ill usage he had received from this paragon of beauty and his associates in the outrage, gave him a severe wound directly in the middle of the upper lip, which added very much to its dimensions. In the morning, when we came to march off, Oh! the woful figure the poor fellow exhibited!—a minister in his pulpit would have found it difficult to have kept his risible faculties in due subjection. To see him on the parade endeavouring to conceal his face from the men, and especially from the officers, was ludicrous in the extreme, and as long as it lasted it diverted our thoughts from resting on our own calamities.
We crossed the Delaware, between the town of Bris-
