As the spring of 1775 advanced, matters took on a constantly more threatening aspect. The governor's force in Boston was steadily increasing, and was approaching a total of four thousand men. Vessels of war were with equal steadiness being added to the little fleet in the harbor. With each budget of news from England it became evident that Parliament would not yield, and at last came word that Lord North had offered a joint resolution that New England was in a state of rebellion, which both houses pledged their lives and fortunes to suppress. With such a military force at his command, and with such moral support from King and Parliament, Gage was in a position to take decided action. No one could doubt what that action would be. Since September the province had been gathering its meagre military supplies. It was but common sense to seize them before they could be used. Soon after the new year Gage began his measures. "Genl. Orders," writes disgruntled Lieutenant Barker. "If any officers of the different Regts. are _capable_ of taking sketches of a Country, they will send their names to the Dep. Adj. Genl ... that is an extraordinary method of wording the order; it might at least have been in a more genteel way; at present it looks as if he doubted whether there were any such." However, there were such, and in February the governor chose Captain Brown and Ensign De Berniere (or Bernicre, as the name is sometimes spelled) and sent them out to map the roads. The little expedition was somewhat absurd, for the disguise which the officers wore was sufficient to conceal them only from their friends. When, at the first tavern at which they stopped, they remarked that it was a very fine country, the black woman who waited on them answered, "So it is, and we have got brave fellows to defend it, and if you go any higher you will find it so." "This," admits Ensign De Berniere, whose account of the expedition was left in Boston at the evacuation, and was "printed for the information and amusement of the curious," "this disconcerted us a good deal." From that time on, any one who took the trouble to "eye them attentively" was in no doubt as to their real character.