While giving these familiar scenes and occurrences at the camp, we are tempted to subjoin one furnished from the manuscript memoir of an eye witness. A large party of Virginia riflemen, who had recently arrived in camp, were strolling about Cambridge, and viewing the collegiate buildings, now turned into barracks. Their half-Indian equipments, and fringed and ruffled hunting garbs, provoked the merriment of some troops from Marblehead, chiefly fishermen and sailors, who thought nothing equal to the round jacket and trowsers. A bantering ensued between them. There was snow upon the ground, and snowballs began to fly when jokes were wanting. The parties waxed warm with the contest. They closed, and came to blows both sides were reinforced, and in a little while at least a thousand were at fisticuffs, and there was a tumult in the camp worthy of the days of Homer. “At this juncture,” writes our informant, “Washington made his appearance, whether by accident or design, I never knew. I saw none of his aides with him; his black servant just behind him mounted. He threw the bridle of his own horse into his servant’s hands, sprang from his seat, rushed into the thickest of the melée, seized two tall brawny riflemen by the throat, keeping them at arm’s-length, talking to and shaking them.” As they were from his own province, he may have felt peculiarly responsible for their good conduct; they were engaged, too, in one of those sectional brawls which were his especial abhorrence; his reprimand must, therefore, have been a vehement one. He was commanding in his serenest moments, but irresistible in his bursts of indignation. On the present occasion, we are told, his appearance and strong-handed rebuke put an instant end to the tumult. The combatants dispersed in all directions, and in less than three minutes none remained on the ground but the two he had collared. The veteran who records this exercise of military authority, seems at a loss which most to admire, the simplicity of the process or the vigor with which it was administered. “Here,” writes he, “bloodshed, imprisonments, trials by court-martial, revengeful feelings between the different corps of the army, were happily prevented by the physical and mental energies of a single person, and the only damage resulting from the fierce encounter was, a few torn hunting frocks and round jackets.”[36] CHAPTER XII. AFFAIRS IN CANADA—ARNOLD AT POINT LEVI—QUEBEC REINFORCED—CROSSING OF THE ST. LAWRENCE—LANDING IN WOLFE’S COVE—ARNOLD ON THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM—CAUTIOUS COUNSEL—QUEBEC AROUSED—THE INVADERS BAFFLED—WITHDRAW TO POINT AUX TREMBLES—BOOMING OF CANNON—CARLETON AT QUEBEC—LETTER OF WASHINGTON TO ARNOLD.