It was the task of Dick and his fellow riflemen to open the way, remove impediments from the streams, learn the fords, explore the portages or carrying-places where, the waters not being navigable, the boats had to be carried over land, and free these last of obstructions. For this work their attire was more suitable than was such garb as Dick had discarded on joining them; it consisted of hunting-cap, flannel shirt, cloth or buckskin breeches, buckskin leggings, moccasins, and outside hunting-shirt of brown linsey-woolsey, with a belt in which a knife and a tomahawk were carried. Each of Morgan's men wore on his cap a front-piece inscribed with the words, "Liberty or Death." This ever present reminder to the men, of the cause for which they toiled and suffered, came not amiss. It was not from the rifle companies that the desertions occurred, which united with swamp-fever and fatigue to reduce the army to fewer than a thousand able men before October 13th. Dick soon realized the truth of old Tom's prediction concerning hard work. At the times when some of the men marched along the river banks, while some forced the bad and heavy bateaux, with their loads of provisions and other supplies, up the rapid stream, the lot of the former, struggling through thickets and swamps and over rocks, was no worse than the lot of the latter, wading and pushing against the current, which oftentimes upset or swamped their boats, and damaged provisions, arms, and ammunition. More than once a whole day was spent in getting around some single cataract, the men unloading the cargoes, carrying them--and sometimes the boats also--on their shoulders, then relaunching and reloading for another tug against the swift stream. Before the Great Portage, from the Kennebec to the Dead River, had been traversed, Dick was inured to the life of an amphibious being, as well as to that of some swamp-infesting animal or of some inhabitant of the underbrush. His breeches and leggings were torn almost from his legs by thickets, which spared not the skin under them, and below the hips he was thoroughly water-soaked. But he still slept and ate well, there being at this time plenty of trout and salmon in the ponds and streams, with which to eke out the diet of pork, meal-cakes, and biscuit. As yet the weather, though cold at night, caused no suffering to a youth of Dick's hardiness, or to a veteran as well seasoned as MacAlister.