hought of nothing but
fortifying himself. "Towards evening," continues the chaplain, "the
General, with his Rehoboam counsellors, came over to line out a fort on
the rocky hill where our breastwork was last year. Now we begin to think
strongly that the grand expedition against Canada is laid aside, and a
foundation made totally to impoverish our country." The whole army was
soon intrenched. The chaplain of Bagley's, with his brother Ebenezer,
chaplain of another regiment, one day walked round the camp and
carefully inspected it. The tour proved satisfactory to the militant
divines, and John Cleaveland reported to his wife: "We have built an
extraordinary good breastwork, sufficient to defend ourselves against
twenty thousand of the enemy, though at present we have not above a
third part of that number fit for duty." Many of the troops had been
sent to the Mohawk, and others to the Hudson.

[Footnote 639: Trumbull, _Hist. Connecticut_, II. 392. "Nabby" (Abigail)
was then a common female name in New England.]

In the regiment of which Cleaveland was chaplain there was a young
surgeon from Danvers, Dr. Caleb Rea, who also kept a copious diary, and,
being of a serious turn, listened with edification to the prayers and
exhortations to which the yeoman soldiery were daily summoned. In his
zeal, he made an inquest among them for singers, and chose the most
melodious to form a regimental choir, "the better to carry on the daily
service of singing psalms;" insomuch that the New England camp was vocal
with rustic harmony, sincere, if somewhat nasal. These seemly
observances were not inconsistent with a certain amount of disorder
among the more turbulent spirits, who, removed from the repressive
influence of tight-laced village communities, sometimes indulged in
conduct which grieved the conscientious surgeon. The rural New England
of that time, with its narrowness, its prejudices, its oddities, its
combative energy, and rugged, unconquerable strength, is among the
things of the past, or lingers in remote corners where the whistle of
the locomotive is never heard. It has spread itself in swarming millions
over half a continent, changing with changing conditions; and even the
part of it that clings to the ancestral hive has transformed and
continues to transform itself.

The provincials were happy in their chaplains, among whom there reigned
a marvellous harmony, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and
Congregationalists meeting twice