would be arrested, and
he therefore asked to be allowed to march by another route. Why was he so
much afraid of the Prussians? Presumably because there was a warrant out
for his arrest for some violation of law while he was a student at
Leipsic. As to his account of his voyage, it is taken almost word for word
from the diary of a Waldeck corporal, Steuernagel, who had six years
earlier made the journey to India and America, and was a great
story-teller.

The official reports of Colonel Hatzfeld, in command of the detachment to
which Seume belonged, and of Commissary Harnier, contain the real facts.
The squadron consisted of six vessels for the Hessian recruits, two
transports for freight, and eight more troop-ships, and two more with
stores, and three frigates as convoy. The names of the ships and the
directions as to the care and food of the men are all recorded. There were
over one thousand men and a great number of women, wives of the soldiers
with their children, all part of the Hessian force,--this was the ninth
year of the war and the eighth and last detachment. Next in command to
Colonel Hatzfeld was Major von Prueschenk; of captains, lieutenants, and
ensigns there were ten,--among them two Muenchhausens. The younger one took
a friendly interest in Corporal Seume at Halifax. The fleet left the Weser
on June 9 and 10, 1782, and the landing at Halifax, in spite of storms and
fog and French men-of-war, was made on August 13 without any noteworthy
incident, according to the official reports. Seume, however, made the
voyage last twenty-two weeks, when in fact that is thirteen weeks longer
than it actually lasted, and he declares they never sighted land nor got
fresh food, yet there was no unusual death-rate, although Steuernagel
complains of the close quarters in the over-crowded ships. On August 19
Colonel Hatzfeld inspected the men with a view to distributing the
recruits in the companies and regiments for which they were needed, and
not a man was missing from the lists made out when the men embarked and
when they disembarked. Just about as true is Seume's account of the return
voyage, which took twenty-three days to England and forty to the German
port of Cuxhaven. Seume had a very comfortable time in America, thanks to
the help of Lieutenant von Muenchhausen. He might have become a Hessian
officer, and yet he says it was difficult for any one not a nobleman to
get a commission. A glance at the Hessian army list sho