On the first of July, 1774, when Hutchinson, in London, was convincing the king that the ministry's aggressive measure was going to bring the recalcitrant Bostonians to terms, Admiral Graves, in his flag-ship, was entering Boston harbor, and new regiments soon followed in their transports. Presently one could count thirty ships of war at their moorings before the town, and the morning drum-beats summoned to the roll-call strong garrisons at Castle William, in Boston itself, and at Salem, now the capital. It was known that arms were stopped, if any one tried to carry them from Boston; and it soon became evident to Gage that it was best to concentrate his force, for he removed his headquarters from Danvers[327] to Boston, and thither his two regiments followed him. Perhaps he had heard of the enthusiasm of a certain young officer, whom he had seen twenty years before, saving all that was saved, on Braddock's bloody day; and how, surviving for the present crisis, he had just declared, in distant Virginia, that he was ready to raise, subsist, and march a thousand men to Boston. Gage must have known George Washington quite as well as the Bostonians did, who were, it is to be feared, better prepared on their part to look upon Israel Putnam, as he marched into town from Connecticut with a drove of sheep for the hungered populace, as a greater hero than the Virginian colonel. September came in, and it did not look as if the conflict could be put off longer.[328] On the first of that month Gage sent a detachment to the Powder House beyond Quarry Hill, in the present Somerville, and it brought away ammunition and cannon and took them to the castle. [Illustration: NOTICE OF THE COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE. From an original in the volume of _Proclamations_, etc., in the library of the Mass. Hist. Society.]