Green Mountain Boys, steering for the camp, "being the first," adds he, "that have appeared of that boasted corps." Some had mutinied and deserted the colonel, and the remainder were at Crown Point; whence they were about to embark.

Such was the purport of different letters received from Schuyler; the last bearing date September 20th. Washington was deeply concerned when informed that he had quitted the army, supposing that General Wooster, as the eldest brigadier, would take rank and command of Montgomery, and considering him deficient in the activity and energy required by the difficult service in which he was engaged. "I am, therefore," writes he to Schuyler, "much alarmed for Arnold, whose expedition was built upon yours, and who will infallibly perish, if the invasion and entry into Canada are abandoned by your successor. I hope by this time the penetration into Canada by your army is effected; but if it is not, and there are any intentions to lay it aside, I beg it may be done in such a manner that Arnold may be saved, by giving him notice; and in the meantime, your army may keep such appearances as to fix Carleton, and to prevent the force of Canada being turned wholly upon Arnold.

Should this find you at Albany, and Gen

Solicitude for Arnold

285

eral Wooster about taking the command, I entreat you to impress him strongly with the importance and necessity of proceeding, or so to conduct, that Arnold may have time to retreat."

What caused this immediate solicitude about Arnold, was a letter received from him, dated ten days previously from Fort Western, on the Kennebec River. He had sent reconnoitering parties ahead in light canoes, to gain intelligence from the Indians, and take the courses and distances to Dead River, a branch of the Kennebec, and he was now forwarding his troops in bateaux in five divisions, one day's march apart; Morgan with his riflemen in the first division, Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Enos commanding the last. As soon as the last division should be under way, Arnold was to set off in a light skiff to overtake the advance. Chaudiere Pond, on the Chaudiere River, was the appointed rendezvous, whence they were to march in a body towards Quebec.

Judging from the date of the letter, Arnold must at this time be making his way, by land and water, through an uninhabited and unexplored wilderness, and beyond the reach of recall; his situation, therefore, would be desperate should General Wooster fail to follow up the campaign against St. John's. The solicitude

of Washington on his account was heightened by the consciousness that the hazardous enterprise in which he was engaged had chiefly been set on foot by himself, and he felt in some degree responsible for the safety of the resolute partisan and his companions.

Fortunately, Wooster was not the successor to Schuyler in the command of the expedition. Washington was mistaken as to the rank of his commission, which was one degree lower than that of Montgomery. The veteran himself, who was a gallant soldier, and had seen service in two wars, expressed himself nobly in the matter, in reply to some inquiry made by Schuyler. "I have the cause of my country too much at heart," said he, "to attempt to make any difficulty or uneasiness in the army, upon whom the success of an enterprise of almost infinite importance to the country is now depending. I shall consider my rank in the army what my commission from the Continental Congress makes it, and shall not attempt to dispute the command with General Montgomery at St. John's." We shall give some further particulars concerning this expedition against St. John's, towards which Washington was turning so anxious an eye.

On the 16th of September, the day after Schuyler's departure for Ticonderoga, Mont

Investment of St. John's

287

gomery proceeded to carry out the plans which had been concerted between them. Landing on the 17th at the place where they had formerly encamped, within a mile and a half of the fort, he detached a force of five hundred men, among whom were three hundred Green Mountain Boys under Colonel Seth Warner, to take a position at the junction of two roads leading to Montreal and Chamblee, so as to intercept relief from those points. He now proceeded to invest St. John's. A battery was erected on a point of land commanding the fort, the shipyards, and the armed schooner. Another was thrown up in the woods on the east side of the fort, at six hundred yards' distance, and furnished with two small mortars. All this was done under an incessant fire from the enemy, which, as yet, was but feebly returned.

St. John's had a garrison of five or six hundred regulars and two hundred Canadian militia. Its commander, Major Preston, made a brave resistance. Montgomery had not proper battering cannon; his mortars were defective; his artillerists unpractised, and the engineer ignorant of the first principles of his art. The siege went on slowly, until the arrival of an artillery company under Captain Lamb, expedited from Saratoga by General Schuyler. Lamb, who was an able officer, immediately

The

bedded a thirteen-inch mortar, and commenced a fire of shot and shells upon the fort. distance, however, was too great, and the positions of the batteries were ill chosen.

A flourishing letter was received by the general from Colonel Ethan Allen, giving hope of further reinforcement. "I am now," writes he, "at the Parish of St. Ours, four leagues from Sorel to the south. I have two hundred

and fifty Canadians under arms. As I march, they gather fast. You may rely on it, that I shall join you in about three days, with five hundred or more Canadian volunteers. I could raise one or two thousand in a week's time; but I will first visit the army with a less number, and, if necessary, go again recruiting. Those that used to be enemies to our cause, come cap in hand to me; and I swear by the Lord, I can raise three times the number of our army in Canada, provided you continue the siege. The eyes of all America, nay, of Europe, are or will be on the economy of this army and the consequences attending it."'*

Allen was actually on his way toward St. John's, when, between Longueil and La Prairie, he met Colonel Brown with his party of Americans and Canadians. A conversation took place between them. Brown assured him * Am. Archives, 4th Series, iii., 754.