George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 8

[433] would not revert to Schuyler the moment the army

Chap. LXVII.} 1776. June.

should be found south of the Canada line.

At Isle aux Noix the men fit for duty remained for eight days, till the invalids could be taken to Crown Point. The voyage was made in leaky boats which had no awnings; so that the sick lay drenched in water and exposed to the sun. Their only food was raw pork, and hard bread or unbaked flour. A physician, who was an eye-witness said: ‘At the sight of so much privation and distress, I wept till I had no more power to weep.’ When, early in July, all the

July.

fragments of the army of Canada had reached Crown Point, the scene of distress produced a momentary despair. Every thing about them, their clothes, their blankets, the air, the very ground they trod on, was infected with the pestilence. ‘I did not look into a tent or a hut,’ says Trumbull, ‘in which I did not find either a dead or dying man.’ Of about five thousand men, housed under tents, or rudely built sheds, or huts of brush, exposed to the damp air of the night, full half were invalids; more than thirty new graves were made every day. In a little more than two months the northern army lost by desertion and death more than five thousand men.