Page:The Adventures Of A Revolutionary Soldier.pdf/65

Rh those in the fort, which was then besieged by the British. Here I endured hardships sufficient to kill half a dozen horses. Let the reader only consider for a moment and he will be satisfied if not sickened. In the cold month of November, without provisions, without clothing, not a scrap of either shoes or stockings to my feet or legs, and in this condition to endure a siege in such a place as that, was appaling in the highest degree.

In confirmation of what I have here said I will give the reader a short description of the pen that I was confined in; confined I was, for it was next to impossible to have got away from it, if I had been so disposed. Well, the island, as it is called, is nothing more than a mud flat in the Delaware, lying upon the west side of the channel. It is diked around the fort, with sluices so constructed that the fort can be laid under water at pleasure, (at least, it was so when I was there, and I presume it has not grown much higher since.) On the eastern side, next the main river, was a zigzag wall built of hewn stone, built, as I was informed, before the revolution at the king's cost. At the southeastern part of the fortification (for fort it could not with propriety be called) was a battery of several long eighteen pounders. At the southwestern angle was another battery with four or five twelve and eighteen pounders and one thirty-two pounder. At the north-western corner was another small battery with three twelve pounders. There were also three block-houses in different parts of the enclosure, but no cannon mounted upon them, nor were they of any use whatever, to us while I was there. On the western side, between the batteries, was a high embankment, within which was a tier of palisadoes. In front of the stone wall, for about half its length, was another embankment, with pallisadoes on the inside of it, and a narrow ditch between them and the stone wall. On the western side of the fortification was a row of barracks, extending from the northern part of the works to about half the length of the fort. On the northern end was another block of barracks which reached nearly across the fort from east to west. In front of these was a large square two story house, for the accommodation of the officers of the garrison; neither this house nor the barracks were of much use at this time, for it was as much as a man's life was worth to enter them, the enemy often directing their