The Indians, with all their alertness, had like to have
"bought the rabit;" they kept coming in all the afternoon, in parties of four or five, whooping and hallooing like wild beasts. After they had got collected they vanished; I never saw any more of them. Our scouting
parties all came in safe, but I was afterwards informed
by a British deserter that several of the enemy perished by the heat and their exertions to get away from a retreating enemy.
The place that our detachment was now at was the Gulf, mentioned in the preceding chapter, where we kept the rice and vinegar thanksgiving of starving memory. We staid here till nearly night, when, no one coming to visit us, we marched off and took up our lodgings for the night in a wood. The next day we crossed the Schuylkill again and went on to Barren hill once more; we staid there a day or two and then returned to camp with keen appetites and empty purses. If any one asks why we did not stay on Barren hill till the British came up, and have taken and given a few bloody noses?—all I have to say in answer is, that the General well knew what he was about; he was not deficient in either courage or conduct, and that was well known to all the revolutionary army.
Soon after this affair we left our winter cantonments, crossed the Schulykill and encamped on the left bank of that river, just opposite to our winter-quarters. We had lain here but a few days, when we heard that the British army had left Philadelphia and were proceeding to New-York, through the Jerseys. We marched immediately in pursuit;—we crossed the Delaware at Carroll's ferry, above Trenton, and encamped a day or two between that town and Princeton. Here I was again detached with a party of one thousand men, as light troops, to get into the enemy's route and follow him close, to favour desertion and pick up stragglers.
The day we were drafted the sun was eclipsed; had this happened upon such an occasion in "olden time," it would have been considered ominous either of good or bad fortune, but we took no notice of it. Our detachment marched in the afternoon and towards night we passed through Princeton; some of the patriotic inhabitants of the town had brought out to the end of the street
