[255]At this time Major William Whistler was commandant of Fort Dearborn, which contained one company of infantry under the immediate command of Capt. Seth Johnson, with Samuel G.I. DeCamp, Surgeon; Julius J.B. Kingsbury, First Lieutenant, and Hannibal Day, James W. Penrose and Edwin R. Long, Second Lieutenants. In many narratives of this expedition, it has been stated that Scott arrived before Fort Dearborn July 8th, but the letters heretofore copied herein, and which should be accurate, make the date July 10th, and that is the date which should be considered in all future references to the subject. Here, for want of harbor facilities, Scott was compelled to unload his men in boats one-half mile out and row them to shore.[256] In all this long journey, with its horrors, and in his long stay at Fort Dearborn, Scott never wearied in his ministrations to the suffering men, whose brows he smoothed as they died in agony, trying with a last gasp to bless him for his patient and loving care. In many a campaign did this fine old hero distinguish himself, but in none did he win more fame than in this, against an enemy with whom he could not treat; in which, as he subsequently stated to John Wentworth: “Sentinals were of no use in warning of the enemy’s approach. He could not storm his works, fortify against him, nor cut his way out, nor make terms of capitulation. There was no respect for a flag of truce and his men were falling upon all sides from an enemy in his very midst.”[257] Among those who sought fortune in this war were most of a class of forty-five cadets of the class of 1832. Twenty-nine of them left Buffalo for the Black Hawk campaign, but nearly all were sent back from Fort Gratiot.[258] On board the ship, amidst stifling air, the dying and dead; on land, in hospital–a very pest house–everywhere, was Scott; and not until the last case had disappeared did he think of relinquishing his fatherly care of the suffering soldiers. Then, on July 29th,[259] finding the spread of the contagion once more checked, he set out with three staff officers for Prairie du Chien, following the route subsequently adopted in 1834 as the mail route from Galena to Chicago, via Fort Payne,[260] Naperville, Aurora, along through what subsequently became DeKalb County, across Lee, up to Dixon’s Ferry, arriving there August 2d with the report that the troops under Eustis were en route for Dixon’s, and leaving on the same day for Galena, which he reached August 3d with his staff officers, Captains Patrick H. Gait, Hartman Bache and William Maynadier. Leaving Galena on the 5th, on the steamboat Warrior, for Fort Crawford, at Prairie du Chien, that point in turn was reached August 7th, when and where he assumed command of the entire army.