Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/231



The Hessians would appear not to have liked Philadelphia. Wiederhold, returning from captivity, and from his sentimental parting at Fredericksburg, calls the Quaker City “a meeting-place of all religions and nations, and consequently a mishmash of all sects and beliefs, and not less a confluens canaillorum,” and believes “that it does not yield to Sodom or Gomorrah in respect to all the vices.” Another officer complains of the climate, and says that the forests make the neighborhood unhealthy. Plants and animals do not acquire their proper size in Pennsylvania, according to this observer, and the people are sickly and prone to madness, “a craziness of the senses, coming rather from poor than from overheated blood. . . . Not one person in a hundred has a healthy color.” It is probable that the difficulty of getting fresh provisions in the half-blockaded town was not without influence on these judgments.

Philadelphia has probably changed less in appearance since 1778 than any other large city in the Northern States. The Hessian officer praises the straight streets, the sidewalks of broad stones, the gutters, and the awnings. He laughs at the provinciality of the