"How to get furnished I know not. I have applied to this and the neighboring colonies, but with what success time only can tell. The reflection of my situation, and that of this army, produces many an unhappy hour when all around me are wrapped in sleep. Few people know the predicament we are in, on a thousand accounts; fewer still will believe, if any disaster happens to these lines, from what cause it flows. I have often thought how much happier I should have been, if, instead of accepting the command under such circumstances, I had taken my musket on my shoulder and entered the ranks, or, if I could have justified the measure to posterity and my own conscience, had retired to the back country, and lived in a wigwam. If I shall be able to rise superior to these and many other difficulties, I shall most religiously believe, that the finger of Providence is in it, to blind the eyes of our enemies; for surely if we get well through this month, it must be for want of their knowing the difficulties we labor under. "Could I have foreseen the difficulties, which have come upon us; could I have known, that such a backwardness would have been discovered among the old soldiers to the service, all the generals on earth should not have convinced me of the propriety of delaying an attack upon Boston till this time."[146] One more blow Washington was to receive, in the news of the failure of the expedition against Quebec. This came to him on the 17th of January. But from about that time, though very slowly, the prospect began to brighten. His army strengthened, money was loaned him by Massachusetts, and though early in February he reported that he had in camp two thousand men without guns, even muskets were eventually provided. Moreover, cannon were now supplied him, through the exertions of Henry Knox. Washington had detached him in November to go to Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and provide means for bringing the captured cannon to camp. The general had even hoped that more might be had from Quebec, but that expectation was now gone. Knox, in the face of many difficulties, fulfilled his mission. On December 17 he wrote from Lake George that he had got the cannon as far as that point, and with forty-two "exceedingly strong sleds" and eighty yoke of oxen expected to make the journey to Springfield, whence fresh cattle would bring him to Cambridge. The artillery, in this humble manner, at last arrived, howitzers, mortars, and cannon, fifty-five pieces of iron or brass. With what had been captured elsewhere the supply was ample, and the guns, after a delay at Framingham, were mounted at the fortifications, or reserved for the attempt to take Dorchester. Powder also had slowly come in faster than it was used or could spoil, and Washington found himself almost ready to act.