Two days afterward, August 17, the troops arrived, and the squadron, commanded by Vice-Admiral Cochrane, moved twenty miles up the bay to the mouth of the Patuxent,--a point about fifty miles distant from Annapolis on the north, and from Washington on the northwest. Having arrived there August 18, Cochrane wrote, or afterward ante-dated, an official letter to Secretary Monroe:[209]-- “Having been called on by the Governor-General of the Canadas to aid him in carrying into effect measures of retaliation against the inhabitants of the United States for the wanton destruction committed by their army in Upper Canada, it has become imperiously my duty, conformably with the nature of the Governor-General’s application, to issue to the naval force under my command an order to destroy and lay waste such towns and districts upon the coast as may be found assailable.” The notice was the more remarkable because Cochrane’s order was issued only to the naval force. The army paid no attention to it. Ross’s troops were landed at Benedict the next day, August 19; but neither there nor elsewhere did they destroy or lay waste towns or districts. They rather showed unusual respect for private property. At Benedict, August 19, the British forces were organized in three brigades, numbering, according to different British accounts, four thousand five hundred, or four thousand rank-and-file.[210] Cockburn with the boats of the fleet the next day, August 20, started up the river in search of Barney’s flotilla; while the land force began its march at four o’clock in the afternoon abreast of the boats, and camped four miles above Benedict without seeing an enemy, or suffering from a worse annoyance than one of the evening thunder-storms common in hot weather. The next day at dawn the British army started again, and marched that day, Sunday, August 21, twelve miles to the village of Nottingham, where it camped.[211] The weather was hot, and the march resembled a midsummer picnic. Through a thickly wooded region, where a hundred militia-men with axes and spades could have delayed their progress for days, the British army moved in a solitude apparently untenanted by human beings, till they reached Nottingham on the Patuxent,--a deserted town, rich in growing crops and full barns.