Free The American Chronicle 1 - Burr by Gore Vidal Page A

province had been ceded only twelve years earlier to England by France, to the great distress (so we were told) of the French colonials who were waiting impatiently for our arrival and “freedom.” I’m afraid we all believed this nonsense.
    As it turned out, the French colonials liked us rather less than they liked the English, whom they actually preferred to their own corrupt French governors. More important, they were quite aware of the hatred Americans have for their church. On reflection, it is very odd that Washington could ever have hoped to appeal to the French Canadians when hardly a day passed that in our press or in the Congress there was not some attack on the Roman Catholic Church and its diabolic plots to overthrow our pure Protestantism in order to make bright a hundred village greens with the burning of martyrs. This insensitivity to other people’s religion and customs has been a constant in the affairs of the republic and the author of much trouble, as Jefferson was to discover when he blithely and illegally annexed Louisiana with its Catholic population.
    At Gardinierstown the famed bateaux were waiting. Made of green pine in great haste, they sank like stones when loaded with cargo. With considerable effort, we made a sufficient number river-worthy. Then on a bright September morning, we set out to conquer Canada.
    Like Napoleon Bonaparte, Benedict Arnold was too great a man to notice weather. Neither understood that autumn is invariably followed by winter and that in such northern latitudes as Russia and Canada winter is invincible. But then none of us anticipated what was ahead—like the grasshopper in the parable we enjoyed the warm September days, and dreamed of glory amongst the northern lights.
    It soon developed that Arnold’s map was inaccurate. The Kennebec River was wilder and swifter then we had been led to believe. Some thirty times we were forced out of the river and into the forest, carrying those infernal bateaux on our backs. Spirits plummeted. Nights were cold. Wolves howled. We saw few people, except at Fort Western, a small depressing outpost (now known as Augusta in the state of Maine).
    A huge bear was chained outside the stockade at Fort Western. There were sores on his legs where the chains chafed. That sight stays in my memory. Also, damp odour of pine needles and dark earth. The flash of mica in gray rock. The cursing of men trying to keep their horns of powder from getting wet as we forded streams, took shelter from the cold rain.
    On land I usually travelled with young Jonathan Dayton (a future speaker of the house and New Jersey senator); we shared the same rations; slept at night beside the same fire. Matt was with the forward company.
    When we went by water, Colonel Arnold would travel in state aboard his own dug-out, manned by two Indians. At first there were good-natured jokes about our commander’s unerring ability to find a settler’s cabin for the night, denying himself the pleasure of sleeping like us al fresco .But when disaster struck, the jokes turned to curses and only the power of his formidable personality kept the men from open mutiny.
    On October 8, we reached the head-water of the Kennebec River. We were exhausted but knew that we must hurry on into settled territory for the fire-red, sun-yellow leaves were turning brown, were falling, and there was a smell of snow on the north wind. Grasshopper weather was over.
    It took us eight days to move over-land to the well-named Dead River. Sullen, swift deep black water twisting through a pristine forest that must have looked the same at the world’s beginning. So deep was the water that we could not pole the bateaux and so had to pull them along with ropes, men doing the usual work of horses. Already the New Yorkers were talking about the beginning of the new year in ten weeks’ time, and the end of their enlistment.
    On the night of October 24, the Dead River flooded. We lost half our provisions and bateaux