Arnold's was to advance by land. He chose the shortest route to Quebec
from the New England seaboard. It lay through the untrodden wilderness
and its difficulties were terrible. Half of it was up the Kennebec river
along whose shallow upper reaches the men would have to drag their boats
on chill autumn days in water sometimes to their waists; then they must
take them over the steep watershed dividing the waters flowing northward
to the St. Lawrence from those flowing southward to the Atlantic. Even
when they embarked on the upper waters of the Chaudiere, which flows
into the St. Lawrence near Quebec, the hardships were killing. The
numerous rapids and falls on that swift and turbulent river would wreck
their boats. At the time no fleet defended Quebec. If, instead of
advancing by this land route, the Americans had been able to bring, by
sea, an adequate force as Wolfe had done, the later history of Canada
might indeed have been different.

Arnold set out in the middle of September with 1100 or 1200 men,--"the
very flower of the colonial youth" they have been called. Many were
hardy frontier men trained in Indian wars, who knew well the
difficulties of the wilderness. But now they were face to face with
something more difficult than they had ever before encountered. When one
Parson Emerson had committed the enterprise to the divine care in a
prayer that, tradition says, lasted for one hour and three-quarters, the
army began its struggle across the dreadful three hundred miles of
forest. The swollen rivers swept away much ammunition and food, until
upon the army settled down the horror of starvation. The boats proved to
be badly built; their crews were always wet and shivering. At night the
men had sometimes to gather on a narrow footing of dry land in the midst
of a swamp and huddled over a fire that at any moment rain might
extinguish. The cold became terrible. Many lay down by the trail to die.
When the journey was half over, Colonel Enos, deeming it useless to lead
the force farther amid such conditions, turned back. With him went some
hundreds of men; but Arnold held on grimly. He pushed ahead to get
succour for his starving force from the Canadian settlements near
Quebec. With a few boats and canoes his party committed themselves to
the Chaudiere river. In two hours Arnold was swept down twenty miles,
steering as best he could through the rapids, and avoiding the rocks, in
the angry river. At one place all his boats