The inspection, review, and flogging being concluded, the party adjourned to the table; for among his other great qualities, the general was remarkably addicted to huge carousals, and in one afternoon’s campaign would leave more dead men on the field than he ever did in the whole course of his military career. Many bulletins of these bloodless victories do still remain on record; and the whole province was once thrown into amaze by the return of one of his campaigns, wherein it was stated, that, though, like Captain Bobadil, he had only twenty men to back him, yet in the short space of six months he had conquered and utterly annihilated sixty oxen, ninety hogs, one hundred sheep, ten thousand cabbages, one thousand bushels of potatoes, one hundred and fifty kilderkins of small beer, two thousand seven hundred and thirty-five pipes, seventy-eight pounds of sugar-plums, and forty bars of iron, besides sundry small meats, game, poultry, and garden-stuff:—an achievement unparalleled since the days of Pantagruel and his all-devouring army, and which showed that it was only necessary to let Van Poffenburgh and his garrison loose in an enemy’s country, and in a little while they would breed a famine, and starve all the inhabitants. No sooner, therefore, had the general received intimation of the visit of Governor Risingh, than he ordered a great dinner to be prepared, and privately sent out a detachment of the most experienced veterans, to rob all the hen-roosts in the neighborhood, and lay the pigsties under contribution,—a service which they discharged with such zeal and promptitude, that the garrison-table groaned under the weight of their spoils. [Illustration: “TO ROB ALL THE HEN-ROOSTS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.” ]