2. The scouting party will then proceed across the Height of Land and down the Chaudière River valley to the French settlement, Sartigan, to buy any cattle, hogs, chickens, sheep, fish, and all available corn or flour the French inhabitants are willing to sell and return with the food supplies to the secure rendezvous site.

3. Those who are too weak or sick to press on to Quebec will be assisted in returning to Fort Western by fifty men of Lieutenant Colonel Enos’s Fourth Division.

4. The rest of the Expedition Force will proceed as fast as possible to the selected rendezvous site at Lake Mégantic.

We set out thereafter with Major Meigs and his Third Division close behind us.

On Wednesday, October 25th Lieutenant Colonel Greene sent a messenger forward to inform us Lieutenant Colonel Enos and the entire Fourth Division voted to quit and return to Fort Western with the Expedition’s sick and injured.

Captain Morgan, Lieutenant Colonel Greene, Major Meigs, and Colonel Arnold are outraged. Worse still, Enos claimed to have only one barrel of flour to give to those of us remaining on the mission. No wonder some of our Riflemen began referring to him as “Colon Anus.”

As we struggled through the muck below the Height of Land and the Canadian border late on Thursday, the 26th of October, I noticed our Virginia Rifle Company is the only unit in the Expedition still carrying seven batteaux. Some of the ones we lost on the 23rd have been replaced with those the “Enos Cowards” left behind.

Each of the two Pennsylvania Companies brought one batteau apiece, but none of the New England Musket Companies took any. It was during the exhausting struggle through the swamp below the Height of Land that Pennsylvania Rifleman Private James Warner succumbed to fatigue, the cold, and hunger.

His wife, Jemima, nursed him for nearly a week before he expired. After enlisting some of his friends to help her bury her young husband in a shallow grave, she picked up his rifle, hatchet, scalping knife, powder horn, and shot pouch and rejoined his comrades in arms as they labored uphill toward the Canadian border.

Our exhausted Virginia Rifle Company arrived at the Height of Land late on Thursday, October 26th. By late Saturday the 28th we were encamped less than a mile from the southern shore of Lake Mégantic. The challenges our starving force endured in hauling our nearly empty batteaux this far made all the previous hardships we endured seem pale by comparison.

The following day, Sunday, October 29th, our excitement at reaching the Height of Land and the Canadian border was tempered when six of our seven batteaux crashed into the rocks of the Chaudière River rapids, throwing Captain Morgan and me into the cascade.