Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/132

128 Washington in charge of horses had, seemingly, no knowledge whatever of frontier life. The horses were not provided with hopples or bells; released from their long confinement in the barges they broke for the woods and many were never again secured. St. Clair facetiously hinted that their master would have had to wear a bell, had he gone to seek them, in order to be secure from becoming lost. It was found later that the horses had been fed, not from troughs, as ordered, but from the sandy river beach, where their grain was strewn and much wasted, the horses also injuring each other in an attempt to eat it.

But patience is exhausted before one half of the miserable story is told. More than enough has been suggested to show the condition of the "grand army" that had gathered and was now about to march northward. It is almost needless to add that an eternal jealousy between militia and regulars existed; that the troops were wretchedly clad; that nothing was known of the country through which the march was to be made, and less than nothing of the foe that was to be met and conquered.