Poor man! He
actually shivered like a reed in his thin military pants, and by
the time we had got up with him, all the sternness that becomes
the soldier had forsaken his face, and he skulked past as if he
were driving his father's sheep under a sword-proof helmet. It
was too much for him to carry any extra armor then, who could not
easily dispose of his natural arms. And for his legs, they were
like heavy artillery in boggy places; better to cut the traces
and forsake them. His greaves chafed and wrestled one with
another for want of other foes. But he did get by and get off
with all his munitions, and lived to fight another day; and I do
not record this as casting any suspicion on his honor and real
bravery in the field.
Wandering on through notches which the streams had made, by the
side and over the brows of hoar hills and mountains, across the
stumpy, rocky, forested, and bepastured country, we at length
crossed on prostrate trees over the Amonoosuck, and breathed the
free air of Unappropriated Land. Thus, in fair days as well as
foul, we had traced up the river to which our native stream is a
tributary, until from Merrimack it became the Pemigewasset that
leaped by our side, and when we had passed its fountain-head, the
Wild Amonoosuck, whose puny channel was crossed at a stride,
guiding us toward its distant source among the mountains, and at
length, without its guidance, we were enabled to reach the summit
of ^Agiocochook^.
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