ay up the Mohawk. His
force, much smaller than at first intended, consisted of the New Jersey
regiment, which mustered five hundred men, known as the Jersey Blues,
and of the fiftieth and fifty-first regiments, called respectively
Shirley's and Pepperell's. These, though paid by the King and counted as
regulars, were in fact raw provincials, just raised in the colonies, and
wearing their gay uniforms with an awkward, unaccustomed air. How they
gloried in them may be gathered from a letter of Sergeant James Gray, of
Pepperell's, to his brother John: "I have two Holland shirts, found me
by the King, and two pair of shoes and two pair of worsted stockings; a
good silver-laced hat (the lace I could sell for four dollars); and my
clothes is as fine scarlet broadcloth as ever you did see. A sergeant
here in the King's regiment is counted as good as an ensign with you;
and one day in every week we must have our hair or wigs powdered."[321]
Most of these gorgeous warriors were already on their way to Oswego,
their first destination.

[Footnote 321: _James Gray to John Gray, 11 July, 1755_.]

Shirley followed, embarking at the Dutch village of Schenectady, and
ascending the Mohawk with about two hundred of the so-called regulars in
bateaux. They passed Fort Johnson, the two villages of the Mohawks, and
the Palatine settlement of German Flats; left behind the last trace of
civilized man, rowed sixty miles through wilderness, and reached the
Great Carrying Place, which divided the waters that flow to the Hudson
from those that flow to Lake Ontario. Here now stands the city which the
classic zeal of its founders has adorned with the name of Rome. Then all
was swamp and forest, traversed by a track that led to Wood
Creek,--which is not to be confounded with the Wood Creek of Lake
Champlain. Thither the bateaux were dragged on sledges and launched on
the dark and tortuous stream, which, fed by a decoction of forest leaves
that oozed from the marshy shores, crept in shadow through depths of
foliage, with only a belt of illumined sky gleaming between the jagged
tree-tops. Tall and lean with straining towards the light, their rough,
gaunt stems trickling with perpetual damps, stood on either hand the
silent hosts of the forest. The skeletons of their dead, barkless,
blanched, and shattered, strewed the mudbanks and shallows; others lay
submerged, like bones of drowned mammoths, thrusting lank, white limbs
above the sullen water; and gr