September, 1780, when orders came to move to the North again, the officers were loath to go. They had understood that they were to remain at Charlottesville until exchanged. Several of them “had laid out great sums in making themselves comfortable habitations; for the barracks became a little town, and there being more society, most of the officers had resorted there. The great objection to residing at them on our first arrival, was on account of the confined situation, being not only surrounded, but even in the woods themselves. The proprietor of the estate will reap great advantages, as the army entirely cleared a space of six miles in circumference around the barracks. After we quitted the barracks, the inhabitants were near a week in destroying the cats that were left behind, which impelled by hunger had gone into the woods. There was reason to suppose they would become extremely wild and ferocious and would be a great annoyance to their poultry.” The Convention Army, crossing the “Pignet Ridge, or more properly, the Blue Mountains,” at Wood’s Gap, moved to Winchester, and thence, recrossing the Ridge at Williams’s Gap, proceeded to Frederick Town, and so to New York to take ship. _III._ _THE ABBÉ ROBIN, ONE OF THE CHAPLAINS TO THE FRENCH ARMY IN AMERICA._ _1781._ _‘New Travels in America’--From Rhode Island to Maryland--Annapolis--The French Army in the Chesapeake--M. de La Fayette--Williamsburg--Tobacco--Yorktown after Siege--Billetting of the French Troops._ The French Army, after a voyage of eighty-five days, landed at Boston June 24, 1781. With it came the Abbé Robin, a philosopher who was more than once in America and has left recorded descriptions of Louisiana as well as of the Atlantic Coast. The Abbé Robin was a genial, generalizing observer--his New Travels in America[F] is an interesting book, particularly in its passages with a bearing upon the activities and the good behavior of the Allies from France. We learn therein how the French introduced among us the brass band and set on foot improvements in the art of the dance: they also brought us to a knowledge of the ancient diversion faro. The New Travels of the Abbé Robin, like so many other travellers’ books of that period, are in the form of letters to a friend. The author proceeded with the Army from Boston to Providence, through Connecticut (where he was struck with traces of the “active and inventive genius” of the inhabitants), to the Camp at Philippsburg, down the Hudson into the Jerseys, past Philadelphia and Baltimore. He writes: Annapolis, September 21, 1781.