mmediately repaired to the
cool spring[45] where we drank two of our kegs with a great deal of
mirth and harmony, toasting the General frequently--and then returned to
our dinners. In the afternoon Parson Gano gave us a sermon."

On the next morning at 11 o'clock the officers again assembled at the
spring "to finish the remainder of our kegs," says Beatty, "which we did
with the sociability we had done the day before," and, he might have
added, with twice as much rum.

To the troops in general rum was measured out with a more sparing hand.
Their pleasures were of a simpler kind, and they seem to have contented
themselves with fishing in the lake, hunting and roaming through the
woods, inviting an occasional attack from stray Indians, which added the
zest of adventure to the routine of camp life. One Sunday afternoon some
soldiers found, concealed in a thicket of bushes and covered with bark,
near one of the pickets, "a very fine chest of carpenter's tools, and
some books, map, and number of papers. It is supposed," says Beatty,
"that it was the property of Croghan who formerly lived here, but is now
gone to the enemy. Therefore the chest is a lawful prize to the men that
found it."

The five weeks at the foot of Otsego Lake were not, however, passed in
idleness. The troops were drilled every day. Target practice for the
musketry is recorded by the journals of officers, and a brass
cannon-ball marked "J. C.," found more than a century later in the Glen
road, west of the village, suggests that the artillery was also engaged
in the perfecting of its marksmanship, which must have awakened strange
echoes amid the hills of Otsego.

There were two incidents of camp life that were long remembered among
Clinton's troops, the one a bit of comedy, the other a grim commonplace
of martial law. The latter related to the discipline of deserters, to
whom various degrees of punishment were meted out by court-martial. On
July 20 two deserters were brought into camp, and on the next day three
others. The more fortunate were sentenced to be whipped. Sergeant
Spears, of the Sixth Massachusetts, was tied to a tree, and the woods
resounded to the blows of the lash, until one hundred strokes had fallen
upon his naked back. Another soldier received five hundred lashes. Three
were sentenced to be shot--Jonathan Pierce, soldier in the Sixth
Massachusetts Regiment; Frederick Snyder, of the Fourth Pennsylvania;
Anthony Dunnavan, of the Third Ne