But Coffee and his Tennesseans were coming from Pensacola through the woods, and Jackson sent courier after courier to them, saying: “Don’t sleep till you reach me or arrive in striking distance.” Carroll, with other Tennessee and Kentucky troops, had floated down the Cumberland, the Ohio, and were now on the Mississippi. But he had only one gun to ten men until he overtook a boatload of muskets, and with these he drilled his men on the decks of his boat. To him Jackson sent a steamboat up the river with this message: “I am resolved, feeble as my force is, to await the enemy on his first landing, and perish sooner than he shall reach the city.” Two thousand Kentuckians under Generals Thomas and Adair were also floating down the Mississippi, a ragged, defenseless and almost gunless crowd, without blanket or tents, and only one cooking kettle to every eighty men. And now it was the 14th day of December, and the British had been at the mouth of the river nearly a week. On the evening of the 17th Coffee, one hundred and twenty-nine miles from New Orleans, received Jackson’s note. His horses were poor, three hundred of his men sick, but in three days he was there; but only with his picked men—800—all that could follow so rapid a march. Here is a description of them: “Their appearance was not very military. In their woolen hunting shirts of dark or dingy color and coperas-dyed pantaloons, made, both cloth and garments, at home, by their wives, mothers and sisters; with slouching wool hats, some composed of the skins of raccoons and foxes, with belts of untanned deerskins, in which were stuck hunting knives and tomahawks, hair long and unkempt, and faces unshorn.” [Illustration: “Paying for the privilege of wiping sentiment out.” The Refinery’s work. The trees on the left were Jackson’s headquarters. The half-completed monument shows in the center of the picture.] Of their leader, Jackson, Roosevelt says, in his “Naval War of 1812:”